More than a billion people worldwide celebrate the Chinese New Year, and in Santa Rosa on Saturday night about 600 people joined the festivities, complete with food, music and a 250-foot glittering red, green and gold dragon.

“It’s a celebration of getting together with family and friends,” said Jean Gee of Petaluma. “I love it.”

Gee is a co-founder of the Redwood Empire Chinese Association, which has sponsored the local celebration for 26 years.

The crowd, seated at tables that nearly filled the Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Building auditorium, was largely non-Chinese, reflecting the county’s relatively small Chinese community.

Nancy Wang, the association president for the past 20 years, said the community numbers about 5,000 to 6,000 people. It includes a Mandarin Chinese language school for children, a cultural program and an adult chorus.

Eleven children from the language school performed a rooster dance on stage, each wearing a rooster-face design on a white paper plate attached to a red headband.

Chinese New Year’s Day was Jan. 28 this year, heralding the start of the Year of the Rooster, one of 12 animals on the Chinese zodiac.

The festivities run for 15 days, but the local event came later, Wang said, because the association is committed to a contract that gives it use of the veterans building on the third Saturday of February every year.

New Year’s Day moves around the modern calendar because it is based on the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar.

Michelle Pereira of Penngrove was there for her fifth straight New Year’s celebration, along with her mother, sister and two children.

Her daughter, Josie Ling, 5, was adopted from China’s Gansu Province four years ago.

“We love it here,” Pereira said. “This is the heart of the matter. We talk about it all year; we get all dressed up.

“We feel a cultural belonging, which is a wonderful thing these days.”

Her son, Cash Visser, 10, performed in the lion dance.

Little Josie, wearing a pink silk dress bought for the occasion, twirled and laughed with friends she had made Saturday night.

Alex Baldi, a 16-year-old junior at Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco, has been to the Santa Rosa celebration every year of his life.

He carried the head of the dragon into the auditorium, leading 24 other youths holding segments on the ceremonial animal on sticks, while men on stage played drums, cymbals and a gong.

Dragons convey “good luck and good fortune” in Chinese culture, he said. They are a fixture in New Year’s parades and appear in art and apparel all year long.

Baldi said he’s been carrying the dragon’s head for eight years. He also wears the lion’s head in the lion dance, with his brother, Derek, 13, forming the body.

The lion is more fun, Alex said, because the two-person crew makes it easier to interact spontaneously with the crowd. The dragon needs to stick to a predetermined route.

Wang thanked the crowd for attending the event, a fundraiser for the association, which is a purely social organization.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.

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