Lotus Festival: "Celebrating the People and Cultures of Asia and the Pacific Islands"
The 29th Annual Lotus Festival highlighted the traditions and customs of the Phillipines this warm sunny weekend at Echo Park in Los Angeles, home of the largest Lotus bed in the United States. It coincides with the centennial celebration of 100 years of sustained Filipino migration to the United States of America from 1906 to 2006.
The Lotus Festival celebrates the people and cultures of Asia and the Pacific Islands, focusing each year on a different featured country. It is the largest special event sponsored by the City of Los Angeles’ Department of Recreation & Parks with as many as 150,000 people expected to attend in the weekend of cultural sharing.
During the month of July, the Lotus flower blooms, and thus the timing of the festival. Last year Echo Lake had a bumper crop with lotus 5 feet high and spilling out of the lake. This year’s climactic changes created a much smaller crop with only about 30 blooms open this past Thursday. Thriving better in murky waters, we even saw a turtle swimming between the lotus stems with larger-than-my-head-sized leaves rising above the water. The flowers, seeds, leaves and stems are all edible. The Sacred Lotus is used in traditional Asian herbal medicine.
The Lotus flower is significant to the Asian cultures as a symbol of rebirth, purity and life. It is also a symbol of the sun, of creation and rebirth, because at night the flower closes and sinks underwater, at dawn it rises and opens again. According to one creation myth it was a giant lotus which first rose out of the watery chaos at the beginning of time. From this giant lotus the sun itself rose on the first day. In Chinese erotic literature, the most flattering name a courtesan can receive is that of “Golden Lotus”.
The Lotus Dance, a Thai classical dance, was performed by Wat Thai of Los Angeles. Attired in pink and green and adorned with gold, members of the dance troupe performed with lotus blossoms.
A day of family entertainment with Asian and Pacific Islander customs and traditions was featured in arts, music, dance, drama and food. Entertainment was provided on a main stage and youth entertainment stage. A health fair, community service organizations, art show exhibit with “lotus flower” theme, and tours of the local Echo Park area were available.
Echo Park is geographically central to Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Korean Town and Filipino communities. Los Angeles, known as a melting pot, has included participation for the Lotus Festival from Asian and Pacific Islander communities including: Japanese, Filipino, Asian Indian, Chinese, Samoan, Tongan, Hawaiian, Thai, Korean, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Sri Lanka, Cambodian, Tibetan, Laotian, Hmong and Indonesian.
A fabulous fireworks finale over Echo Park Lake concluded the day's activities at 9:00 p.m., with legendary Taiko Drummers playing the background.
(C) MBN 2006 (Joyce Chow-William Hoehne)
