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It seams like the anti-lion dancers have non-Cantonese surnames. I wonder if their anti-lion dance stance is coming from a Christian point of view that has an international historic pattern of erasing pagan cultures rich in traditional heritage at all costs in order to appease their god and securing their personal spot pass the gates of heaven.

I would support a Gang of 4 boycott of Red Blossom Tea Co. and the 3 other merchants supporting this anti-time honored traditions of Chinatown. These business don't belong in Chinatown. Load and unload inventory usually doesn't happen on the busiest days in Chinatown and people with disabilities usually avoid coming to Chinatown during the most crowded days. It's really their bad attitude and lack of community spirit is why they don't have customers. Nobody goes to Chinatown just to purchase tea.


By Ko Lyn Cheang
April 18, 2024

Lion Dance ME founder Normal Lau addresses the Board of Appeals during a hearing Wednesday regarding a Chinatown entertainment permit in San Francisco. Several Chinatown restaurants accuse the organization of causing a disturbance in the streets of the city.

Ruby Cai’s daughter was just a baby when she first saw lion dancers in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Cai remembered standing on Grant Avenue, baby in her arms, watching lion dancers from a local troupe, Lion Dance ME, perform stunts across 6-foot-high metal discs. Cai was inspired to sign up her daughter, Anthea Zhang, now 7, to learn lion dancing as soon as she was old enough.

But the famed troupe and its dancers, including Zhang, are now facing the biggest challenge to its street dancing since it was founded in 2012.

Last month, four Chinatown merchants asked the city to shut down the popular youth group’s weekend performances on Grant Avenue, alleging that the noise disturbed residents and drove customers away from businesses. The group said that the Chinatown community was not properly consulted before the group’s permit was approved and asked officials to revoke it.

Dragon dancers from Lion Dance ME prepare for a night market performance in San Francisco’s Chinatown on April 12.

Lion Dance ME (for “music” and “entertainment”) consists of about 100 full-time student dancers who perform hundreds of times a year across the Bay Area and country. They were recently crowned the best lion dancing group in the West.

Every weekend since 2020, the group has closed a block of Grant Avenue in Chinatown to rehearse and perform a 4 p.m. show. Initially the performances were part of a COVID-era revitalization effort to attract visitors to the neighborhood, led by the Chinatown Merchants’ Association.

The group had permission from two city agencies — the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and the Entertainment Commission — to perform, and both agencies said they had never heard community opposition to the lion dancers until last month. That was when the merchants appealed the renewal of the entertainment permit.

Vociferous debate has erupted since. A petition launched by the opponents to shut down the lion dancing garnered more than 1,600 signatures, while another petition launched by the lion dancers garnered more than 1,700 signatures.

Both sides say they want what’s best for Chinatown. But the heart of the conflict is whether the lion dancers, with thunderous drumming and the hours-long street closures, are a bane or a boon for the historic neighborhood.

On Wednesday night, over the course of an almost four-hour hearing at City Hall, the Chinatown merchants and the lion dancers pleaded their sides and reached a temporary resolution.

The troupe had a permit that allowed it to perform on three blocks of Grant Avenue all day on Saturdays and Sundays through March 2025. The opponents appealed the permit and wanted no street performances.

The city’s appeal board hoped for a compromise, voting 4-1 to allow the group to continue lion dancing on only the 700 block of Grant Avenue, between Sacramento and Clay streets, on Saturday afternoons until the end of June to allow planned Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month activities, including a high school lion dancing competition, to go forward

Lion Dance ME members enter the Board of Appeals room in solidarity during a hearing Wednesday regarding a Chinatown entertainment permit in San Francisco for public lion dance performances on Grant Avenue.

After that, the group will have to reapply for a new entertainment permit — which could once again be challenged by the opponents — if it wants to continue performing in Chinatown. Board members said they hoped this arrangement would incentivize the two parties to reach a deal before the end of June, while not penalizing the lion dancers, who haven’t been able to perform in Chinatown since the permit was appealed.

“My priority is to get kids back dancing on the street and let the culture be as dynamic as it has been in the history of the tradition,” said Commissioner Rick Swig, who voted with the majority.

The Chinatown performances provide the public with valuable free entertainment and draw visitors to boost the neighborhood’s economy, said Norman Lau, the group’s owner and master, or sifu. A veteran lion dancer and coach for the group, Tony Mo, also said that the street closure gives the group much-needed rehearsal space to practice stunts.

“We make no money. We actually lose money every time we do the street closure,” Lau told the Chronicle, citing costs of paying staff and feeding the lion dancers.

More than a dozen Chinatown community members spoke at the hearing in support of continuing lion dancing in Chinatown, including Steven Lee, owner of Sam Wo Restaurant and the Lion’s Den nightclub. Lee told the Chronicle that Lion Dance ME is a “proven draw to Chinatown” and is good for students.

“To eliminate (Lion Dance ME) … is going to be bad for the community,” Lee said during the hearing.

The four merchants, who have businesses on the 800 block of Grant Avenue, want the group gone from Grant Avenue.

One of the four, Jennifer Kwa, owner of Jen’s Gems, said at the hearing that weekend sales are important to small businesses facing a difficult post-pandemic recovery.

“We don’t wish to stymie lion dancing as a cultural art; that’s really not the concern,” Ben Marcus-Willers, the brand director of Red Blossom Tea Co. and one of the opponents, said at the hearing. He said he thinks the lion dancers should be performing in an indoor event space. “The concern here is the venue, and the duration and frequency.”

Chinatown merchant Ben Marcus-Willers addresses the San Francisco Board of Appeals during Wednesday’s hearing on a Chinatown entertainment permit. Several Chinatown restaurants are accusing the Lion Dance Me organization of causing a disturbance in the streets of the city.

Chinatown merchant Ben Marcus-Willers addresses the San Francisco Board of Appeals during Wednesday’s hearing on a Chinatown entertainment permit. Several Chinatown restaurants are accusing the Lion Dance Me organization of causing a disturbance in the streets of the city.

He played a recorded clip of loud lion dance drumming at the hearing to demonstrate what it sounds like.

Marcus-Willers told the Chronicle that the street closures would be a problem because the tea shop requires direct access to the street to load and unload inventory, as well as to invite customers, especially those with disabilities, into the store.

The opponents can’t appeal the SFMTA permit the troupe won in February because the appeal window has passed. They said they weren’t aware of it until after it was approved. They said one day they arrived at work to find a sign saying “no stopping” from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. had been erected by the agency.

Nick Chapman, the agency’s manager for street closures, said the organization had posted at least six multilingual public notices along the affected blocks of Grant Avenue, but the merchants said they did not see them.

Lau agreed to ask the agency to shorten the street closure permit to Saturday and limit it to one block instead of three.

Dozens of lion dancers stayed late to attend the entire hearing, telling the Chronicle they loved performing in Chinatown but didn’t want to harm the community they intended to serve.

“It’s a tough situation because we also don’t want businesses to lose money,” said Mo, 23. “We’re all together. We’re all the Chinese community.”

Reach Ko Lyn Cheang: kolyn.cheang@sfchronicle.com

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The first sign of displacement is when non-local merchants who are not part of the cultural history of Chinatown start changing the cultural landscape of Chinatown. They are doing business in Chinatown because Chinatown is a living theme park that they are capitalizing on but they, themselves, don't contribute to spreading our culture. If the Chinatown lion dances performing business blessing ceremonies occur between lunch and dinner, you draw 2 types of customers in to Chinatown. You draw people with their children who want to see the cultural engagement of Cantonese lion dances after dim sum and you draw customers who want to see the performances before eating an authentic high quality Chinese dinner and maybe afterwards purchase tickets at a downtown theater or cinema. Keeping Chinatown restaurants full of customers subsidizes low income rents for poor tenants living in SROS above the restaurants as well as keeping local residents employed and paying taxes. Customers just don't come to Chinatown just for the tea.

[www.sfpublicpress.org]
“We’re not a theme park,” said Ben Marcus-Willers, branding director for Red Blossom Tea Company and one of a handful of people opposing the potential expansion of outdoor events. Other closures of Grant Avenue for events have disrupted the flow of customers to the shop, he said.