Why Chinese immigrants are taking over parks in the San Gabriel Valley to dance

Getting lost sometimes leads you to unexpected destinations. Sometimes it’s a completely different country right in your backyard.

A few weeks ago I got lost while driving through Temple City on my way to a place I’ve visited many times. Dusk was coming, enveloping everything in that quiet suburban darkness.

I turned onto a side street near what appeared to be a giant park and heard the unmistakable sound of Chinese music blasting from a boom box.

I stopped and saw it.

About ten women would gather together to dance to Mandarin songs from a bygone era.

It’s actually a scene I’ve seen before in parks and other open spaces in the San Gabriel Valley over the past few years.

Chinese phenomenon

However, I first saw these dance meetings in China about ten years ago. One of the key features of the country’s urban design is its giant plazas—those endless concrete expanses of flat, open space dotted with cities.

One evening I came upon a group of Chinese women dancing in unison in one of these open-air squares, about 30 to 50 of them. I watched in fascination as they drank their stuff to one Chinese song after another blasting out of the boom box.

They didn’t look like they were rehearsing for a performance or were there for any reason other than the sheer joy and leisure of the event.

“Dances in the square” or “dances in the square” (广场舞) as phenomenon it is known originated in China in the 1990s. Legions of women, mostly middle-aged and older, gather together to work out, to exercise and to relieve boredom after retirement. In China, the retirement age for women is 50 or 55, depending on the type of work they do. Starting next year, these limits will be increased.

Summary of degrees to SGV

In the San Gabriel Valley, home to many Chinese immigrants, the motivation that led this group of women to gather under a gazebo in Temple City Park was much the same.

A woman in her 60s wearing a polka dot dress, who gave her name as A Yun, said she has been dancing here for more than a decade after learning about the scene through the grapevine.

“Someone told us that there is ‘square dancing’ here.” We came to check it out,” said Ah Yun, who lives in El Monte and is originally from Guangzhou.

She quickly became a regular, learning the steps from the woman who led these nightly meetings. Up to 100 women appear in the largest number.

“You can do it yourself. It’s not the same as learning how to dance social dances where you need two,” she said in Cantonese. “With this, nobody cares if you’re good or bad at it.”

Ding Ding is originally from Shanghai. Before she immigrated to the US about ten years ago. she said she occasionally joined others to dance in public in that Chinese city.

One day, an 80-year-old girl said she was walking in Temple City and saw people dancing in the park. The ritual quickly became an outlet she looked forward to every day, so much so that she had to dress and clean herself. Tonight she was wearing a blue patterned dress.

Over the years, dancers have come and gone, but no one has ever been turned away.

The ladies were especially excited tonight because the woman who started it all — who they call their “teacher” — was coming back to show the group a new number.

Their teacher is 73 years old, wearing a baseball cap and a mask. She did not want to give her name, but said she used to live near Temple City before moving away. She still comes back from time to time to meet the group.

She told me she unwittingly brought the trend to this park 13 years ago after moving from northeast China. She bought a portable music player, turned it on and started dancing by herself.

Soon, women began to appear and ask if they could join. One by one the band was built.

Ding Ding connected. “In general, the environment here is so good. It is ideal for dancing. This is what happened,” she said in Mandarin.