Back from a whirlwind of stardom and controversy at the Winter Olympics in Milan, gold medalist Eileen Gu returned home Saturday night to lead San Francisco\u2019s annual Chinese New Year Parade.<\/p>\n
Gu, who was born and raised in the city, has been castigated as a traitor (opens in new tab)<\/a> on social media for representing China \u2014 her mother\u2019s home country \u2014 on the world stage. But as she lit firecrackers at the Union Square television broadcast zone to officially kick off the parade, she was simply a daughter of San Francisco\u2019s Chinese community<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cGrowing up in San Francisco, this was a huge part of my childhood, and I remember going every year,\u201d Gu said in a statement ahead of the event.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing part of the Asian community in San Francisco and coming back to my roots is something I\u2019m so much looking forward to.\u201d<\/p>\n Gu is now attending Stanford University while pursuing a career in modeling and fashion. She was named the parade\u2019s grand marshal<\/a> ahead of the Olympics, where she earned one gold and two silver medals. Combined with her medals from the 2022 Beijing Games, Gu is now the most decorated freestyle skier (opens in new tab)<\/a> in history.<\/p>\n The parade is a long-standing tradition in Chinatown, spanning roughly 1.5 miles from downtown to Chinatown. It is considered the largest nighttime parade in the United States and the biggest Lunar New Year celebration outside of Asia.<\/p>\n 2026 is the Year of the Fire Horse, with the theme \u201cHorse Leads to Success(\u9a6c\u5230\u6210\u529f).\u201d<\/p>\n Parade director Tong Lau said organizers were expecting record attendance at this weekend\u2019s festivities, with around 800,000 to 1 million people. \u201cAll the tickets are already sold out,\u201d Lau told The Standard in Cantonese.<\/p>\n More than 100 groups marched in the parade, including corporations, nonprofits, schools, community organizations, and politicians. There were 17 floats, with the largest one sponsored by Alaska Airlines.<\/p>\n In recent years, the parade has featured mostly Hollywood celebrities with Asian heritage as grand marshals, including Michelle Yeoh (opens in new tab)<\/a>, Joan Chen<\/a>, Awkwafina<\/a>, Daniel Wu, and Rich Ting. Celebrity DJ Zhu, who performed at Mayor Daniel Lurie\u2019s inauguration party in Chinatown<\/a>, also appeared in this year\u2019s parade.<\/p>\n \u201cWe hope the event reminds people of their roots,\u201d Lau said. \u201cAnd that the next generation can carry this history forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back from a whirlwind of stardom and controversy at the Winter Olympics in Milan, gold medalist Eileen Gu…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[13005,61032,10012,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-209787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-chinatown","9":"tag-lunar-new-year","10":"tag-olympics","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","13":"tag-san-francisco-news","14":"tag-sf","15":"tag-sf-headlines","16":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}