You I'm going to do it. What? I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm sorry. No! I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Let's go! I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going a performance by Mimu. Another round of applause please. Good afternoon and welcome. My name is Sam Gomez. I am the director of diversity and inclusion for the City of New Shell. Before I continue I would like to thank everyone who made this possible. I would like to thank City Manager Will Freddor, Will Freddor Mendez, and Deputy City Manager Toccasaldo for believing in all these different events and the importance of celebrating all the different cultures that are living in the city. Also to Mayor Jadilla Ramos Herbert for also believing in everything that we do. And now I would like to introduce our fellow Mendes City Manager. Thank you and welcome. We got a little better weather than it was last time. So first of all, I want to thank everybody for coming tonight. I want to give a big thank you to our staff. This doesn't happen without a lot of work in the background. So thanks to Sammy Gomez and Samantha Vargas from our city staff. I want to acknowledge a couple people here that are very important for us at the city of New Michelle, our fire commissioner, Andy Sandor, our newman resource Michelle Leveris, who works tirelessly to help to produce these events, our Deputy City Manager Todd Castaldo, and of course our community communication staff, and our County Executive Ken Jenkins is here tonight. So thank you very much for coming. So this year is an incredibly important time that represents hope, new beginnings, and culture unity around the world. That is really what a new year is. The whole world comes together to celebrate, at some point in time, to start a new year, regardless of your own culture or ethnic background. Discollective celebration is a reminder of no matter how different we are in cultures We are all united by one common time. So it represents renewals family Get together is a more politely hope and one thing that these celebrations do and and really it really highlight what just our Performance today keeps us connected to our to our ancient customs and rituals and that never go away. So we see that every year, thank God, with celebrations like this. So new years and opportunities celebrate our unity. It provides us an opportunity to come together regardless of our backgrounds, whether we're Asian or not to appreciate the beauty of a shared unity. So everyone is welcome. It reminds us that we all are part of something much larger, more meaningful. And thank you for the community here in Narshala, our Asian community here in Narshala. And with that, I wanna thank you. I hope we have a good time tonight. And I'd like to introduce Ken Jenkins, we just want to say a couple words from the African County and Narshala. All right, so first good afternoon, everyone. All right, try again. Good afternoon, everyone. It's such a privilege to be with you this afternoon as you're celebrating Luna New Year. Certainly it is the year of the wood fire snake. And we want to make sure to continue to be here to support all of you. As Will Melendez said before, the city of New Rochelle and Delaramos Herbert, Sam, everybody, the council members, everyone working together, and this is what makes not just New Rochelle so great, makes Westchester in our country so great. So again, it's an opportunity for all of us to recognize similarities in different cultures and certainly appreciate the differences as we continue to celebrate together. So again, congratulations. Let's give it up one more time for our performers earlier. And certainly we always make sure to say whenever we do all of the cultural celebrations that we do around Westchester County, that Westchester starts with WE and that means we and that means all of us together make a difference. Congratulations to the work that Sam and the team have done here and again have a wonderful program. Thank you so much. And I would like to introduce Jane Lee, president of OCA. Good evening, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jane Lee. I'm the president of OCA Westchester- River chapter. OCA is a national PBI, PBI AAPI, AdWords Group group. And our Westchester Hudson River chapter is very active in involved local community to advocate for AAPI and promote for Asian culture and the education there. So today I would like to extend my warm and heart-fear welcome to all of you as we gather here to celebrate Luna Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year is more than just a celebration of the beginning of the Lunar New Year. Actually, this is a time for family and come together and all the traditions there and then reflect the blessing of the past and while embracing the opportunities of the few new ones. This is the celebration of renewal, great growth and harmony. And also this year is the year of snake snake. So I want to remind you like the snake in Chinese culture, it's symbolical of wisdom, transformation, and resilience there. And then also snake in Chinese culture is always associated with intuitive grace and resourceful. So this quality is a reminder, no matter how challenges we are going to face, we always can navigate them through the careful source and distance. So with that, I'm going to introduce some programs we've all see a bring together for you. These programs, Asian programs, including Chinese career and with means there. So we are going to have, we already see a line dance and then next one I will introduce a Chinese classic dancing and then we also have a career craft tables and some written culture presented here too. So first we are going to introduce Chinese dance. The name is called, in China it's called like in Chinese waves. We have these two beautiful ladies behind me. And I'm going to introduce what the dance for. This is a very poetic, classic Chinese dance. The dancers use the hand fence as prompts. Moving Greece, yeah, this is the hand fence. They can show us there. So they were moving a grease 40 and expressively. And the music used a traditional instrument, including like a Chinese zither and then fruit, fruit along with the gentle, rippling water sounds there. And then this is a charming scene of the wandering in West Lake and appreciate the light, the clouds and the shadow and the waves in the surroundings. And if you don't know Chinese culture like West Lake in China, of course, Xi is located in Hangzhou, China. It's a well-known heritage site in China. It's represent, it's known for its beautiful nature and also have profound cultural, significant in China. So next time, if you ever go to China with it, besides the Shanghai Beijing, put like Hangzhou Si Hu, West Lake as your roadmap, you will not be disappointed there. Okay, so without further ado, I'm going to let these two ladies they are performed. So they come from Li Garden dancing company and the performer. I'm going to let these two ladies perform. So they come from Li Garden, Dancing Company. And the performer is Liu Fang and Wang Xia. OK. Let's please enjoy. Thank you. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit of a conversation. I'm going to have a little bit of a conversation. I'm going to have a little bit of a conversation. I'm going to have a little bit of a conversation. I'm going to actually show you some Chinese because these programs will be educational and culture. So I'm going to take a, you have any kids want to try it and take a picture with it, help yourself. I'm going to take a case, want to try it and take a picture with it, help yourself. Take a number. Okay, so I'm going to show you some Chinese culture and then in transition cell. So make sure, like, I did it right. Okay. First, this is a red envelope. I don't know whether you know this tradition. When I was young, like as a young, he's, like this is one of the most desirable, like Chinese tradition I like, because this is supposed to the adults, your parents give you your kids money for that. And then this symbolizes that we should have kids like healthy and growing, healthy and then safely built it there. So, as a tradition, in the first year of the New Year, the kids are supposed to come to your parents and then just say, If you want to say that, say, hold this hand, I say, Gongxi, Fa Cai, Gongxi, Fa Cai, yeah, let's run the Gongxi, Fa Cai, and then what parents are supposed to do, then they will put the money inside this emulator and give to the kids. So if you have, and then for every like young kids, they have so many parents, grandparents. So every like older, older, supposed to give the emerald to the young kids. So for the kids. So if you have a kid, and if you have your parents, you have like yourts, your grand parents, each time you say, Gong Chi Pa Cai, you deserve to get a red emerald there. So imagine that one, if you have a lot of relatives there, and towards there you will have a stack of like red emerald there and then that's one of the very happy day your day. And then you have so many like money so you can use to buy whatever you want there. So that's one of, as a young kid, like grow up in China, this is one of the most, most like important tradition. Make sure my parents didn't forget to prepare a little so you read them for me for me and I get all the money is there and so this is one of the traditions. The second one I want to show you guys is like a red Latin. I think she is hand out some craft for us to do. So if you have that one, yeah, the lady, she is like a girl out all the, so you can have one there. Make sure you have one there. Okay. Yeah, get one for there. What do you do for this one? This one is red and yellow. What do you do? You take the white stuff out. Then you fold it this way. let me see. And stick that together, let me see. There you get these beautiful lanterns there, see? And then like in the, in the has a below there is a sticker there. And so this time, this one is meaningful, the word it means for, let it like symbolize as well, has to be fought, let me for should supposed be fortune. Like you're fortune, like you will make sure that you will have a very fortune the year. And then this is a call four. And then this side, the Chinese means like wealthy. Then you like symbolize a lot of wealthy money you can get. So this is all the good words for you. And then the letter itself, it's just to show you like young kids have to always like to take them around. And this is from the legend, the legend story of like in the past, they always have like some mystery like a beast. It's really bad. But this red lantern has to means like scale them away. So that's why we always have a lantern, have a kids there, and also you can put like a decorate in your house, like some like there. So whenever you, in Chinese, that's a bigger transition too. You can see all these red lanterns, like hang out in a lot of places there. And also this is red. It's also very important that in Chinese culture, they for the lunar celebration, they use red color, because the color is symbolized as a Kibbut peace, and then Kibbut away from the hum, possible hum, you can get. So this is always the color of celebrations there. So every kids can have a one and then just as a new year's of children's celebration there. Okay. So make sure you have your lantern, you take it and then you can like home and hand in to your decoration there. And then you can keep you peace, fortune, and then healthy. And then get weighted off all the like possible like bad things that can happen to you. So let's go. Okay. I'm happy. I'm happy. I'm here. So do you want? I'm here. Okay. Oh. Hey. You can do it. I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming. Since our dance is ready and then I'm going to introduce the second dance. The second dance name called passes by in the mystery ring. And this is a traditional Chinese dance with incorporated contemporary dance there. The feature that is group of ladies in the ring, they're strolling in the mystery ring. In this dance, they actually started the philosophy of the nature of life. And then acknowledge that everybody is kind of passing by. And then we then should be appreciated and then impressed for the president there so President so the dance the dancers were well traditional This way more and then which is like widely trimmed heads with flowing wheels there It's a fun fact there, they always say in the past, like in the traditional Chinese life, the woman are married, they shouldn't be seen by the strangers. If you are seen by the strangers, you have to marry them or something in this kind of transition. So actually, the ladies, when they come out, they wear this kind of well and to cover their face. So it's very classic and very transition level. And so this dancing will be described kind of artistic thing of walking in the very hazy raining day. And then the dancing actually showcased the very subtle grace for Chinese dance technique with very expressive power for like contemporary movement movement there. So I hope you will enjoy it. And then... Ready? Already? I'm The wind blows in the sky, the sun shines in the sky. The light of the city is the key to the world. The moon is shining in the window, the sun is shining in the window. The wind blows through the window The wind blows through the window The wind blows through the window The wind blows through the window The wind blows through the window The wind blows through the window The wind blows through the window The wind blows through the window The wind blows through the window I'm not a good man. I'm not a good man. I'm not a good man. I'm not a good man. I'm not a good man. I'm not a good man. I'm not a good man. I'm not a good man. I'm not a good man. I'm not a good man. I'm not a good man. I'm not a good man. I'm not a good man. I'm not a go to the beach. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Everybody want to try this one? And then take some pictures here? And then? We'll go me to take a picture? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, cool. Yeah. Hey! Hey! Ha! I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. Let's watch. This is lime, dents line, dance, yeah. Give them a few minutes there. Okay. Okay, we can do more like after there. So we also, next one, we are also bring back our line dance. Before they come, I want to give you some introduction about the line dance. Why is it so significant in Chinese culture?? Because like a line dance is always the highlight of Chinese lunar New Year's celebration, because this is embodied joy, the strength, and then good fortune. And with this energetic move, and then the drumming, and the dance actually just symbolizes that you can get rid of all the negative energies and just the way of all the bad things and then embrace for the future. And so let's kind of we're in a welcome, always use this very cheerful dancing to welcome the bright future year. So, and the lion itself in Chinese culture is very powerful and the auspicious creatures in Chinese culture, and then they always bring excitement and then positive to the festivals there. And then today's our performance is bought to you by our Miu Shu dancing team and then Look at those beautiful kids and then drummers and we hope you are enjoying those their performance there And then bring the excitement and bring the fortune and the joy for your when you started the new year Okay, so let's welcome one more performance from our new music, Lion Dance Team. dance team. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm gonna do it. Oh! Okay. Thank you so much there. Okay. Thank you so much there. Okay. I will leave it to Sam for the closing. On behalf of the City of New York, we would like to thank everyone for coming. And I would like to thank City staff for all their work and effort, especially the City Manager. And I know there is a City employee, Nia Fagel, who came out of her way today to help. She didn't have to be here today, but she believes in the sense that we do, and she wanted to support this event. So I'm thankful for her assistance as well as everybody else in the city. So thank you very much for coming. Right outside, we have some light refreshments, and we have some activities for the children. So please join us in the Rotunda. And everyone else, OCA members, Daniel, Jane, City Manager, we're going to take a picture. Andy, if you want to join us in the stage for a picture, thank you, we want to enjoy. Thank you. Thank you.