Cambodia Town Parade & Festival Returns

Now in its 14th year, the parade commences at Cherry Avenue and Anaheim Street, and travels west on Anaheim until it ends about a half-mile later at MacArthur Park. There, the festival takes center stage, quite literally, with a bevy of performers and performances scheduled.

The parade will include floats, re-enactments and dancers, including members of the Long Beach’s Khmer Arts Academy, which will lead the parade by performing prayer dance as well as a festival blessing dance. Khmer Arts’ reputation for authenticity and cultural accuracy is so well-known that Disney used several members of the academy as consultants for its film “Raya and the Last Dragon.”

Mea Lath, managing director of the Academy, said her pupils, who until recently had been limited to performing virtually, have performed with a palpable enthusiasm that “makes it feel like they haven’t been away at all. [The pandemic] took the magic away, temporarily. A lot of the love and energy is back.”

The parade and festival has become one of the most popular and entertaining cultural events in Long Beach, providing the Khmer community not only with an opportunity to come together, but to welcome others into their vibrant circle. For the past two years, because of the pandemic, that’s been especially hard for this tight knit community.

“This means a lot to us. It’s been very difficult [during the pandemic],” said Richer San, who is on the board of directors of Cambodia Town Inc. “We want to re-share our culture with Long Beach. So many good things come from this.”

Cambodia Town, focused in and around a 1.2-mile stretch of Anaheim Street between Atlantic and Junipero avenues, is home to the largest concentration of Cambodians of any city outside of Asia. Its business district includes numerous restaurants, clothing stores, jewelry stores and temples, most of which will be open during the parade and festival and eager to welcome folks to the neighborhood.“

Our business community was hit hard, this will bring foot traffic and tourists to the community,” San said. “So many [business people] have been begging us, saying ‘Please! Restart the parade! We need this!’”

The parade began in 2005, becoming the first Cambodian parade outside of the country itself. San said the event was meant to serve as “a unifying force for Cambodians in Long Beach” by presenting Cambodian cultural customs and traditions to change the social and economic well-being of residents and business owners, while also giving a strengthened identity to the community’s children.

This high-minded mission almost didn’t occur, since it rained so hard the morning of the event that Sithea San, Richer’s wife, believed the whole thing was “doomed.” Fortunately, an hour before its scheduled start, the sun came out, and the show went on.

This year, the parade emerges from under the dark cloud of the pandemic and is expected to continue its decade-plus growth, helped tremendously by the financial input of many in and around Long Beach as well as the efforts of countless volunteers putting in countless hours.

“It’s the volunteers who make sure this happens every year,” San said. “This year it’s going to be bigger and better, and the volunteers are the ones who do that.”

Though Cambodia Town mainstay Sophy’s Restaurant will provide food at the festival, most restaurants will be open and serving on Sunday, good news since the Cambodia Town dining scene is not only one of the most exciting in the city, but one of the most unique in the country.

“One thing we discovered after the first parade is that young people eat everything,” San said. “And we have all kinds of Cambodian food here. We want them to walk around and try it all, because they will.”

And though it actually occurred a couple weeks before the parade and festival, San says he looks at the events as the first day of spring for his community.

“We’re hoping this is the beginning of [Cambodia Town] being revitalized,” he said. “Like spring, like a flower blooming, we are coming back to life. We need to be alive! Long Beach needs us to be alive!”