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[applause] >> thank you, everyone for joining us. good evening and welcome to mayor edwin lee and san francisco city hall possible lunar new year celebration. i am lisa ahng, the liaison of mayor li's to the asian-american community. i want to preface this part by siam only 1/8 chinese, so there

is only a 12.5% chance this will go as it should. [speaking chinese] to start up the night, we have the chair of the treasure island board of directors and chairman of the asian american pacific celebration committee c laudine chang. [applause] >> good evening, everyone. thank you so much for celebrating -- joining us on this joyous occasion. welcoming and celebrating lunar new year. i am delighted to be your mistress of ceremonies this evening. this year, the chinese new year started on thursday, february 3. lunar new year, 4709, symbolized by the year of the hare.

we all know it as a chinese new year but lunar new year was actually celebrated by many ethnic groups within the asian american pacific families, including vietnamese-americans, caribbean-americans, and others. in san francisco, we celebrated with our parade. -- korean-americans, and others. we celebrated the whole month to welcome everybody. it is supposed to be a year of good luck, a year of prosperity and good health so on behalf of mayor edwin lee, i want to welcome you here this evening. [speaking chinese]

so we have the celebration in san francisco welcome the community to celebrate the chinese new year for many years now but this year we are particularly excited and very happy because this is an historic year where we are hosted by our first chinese- american mayor. [applause] this is another historic occasion.

[speaking chinese] at this time, without further ado, i want to bring up our mayor, mayor edwin lee. [applause] >> thank you, claudine. good evening, everybody. happy new year. i am very honored to join supervisor chu, a supervisor carmen chu, eric mar, and jane kim, and supervisor campos, supervisor mirkarimi, malia cohen is here as well. it is a wonderful occasion to celebrate our chinese new year at city hall. i want to welcome all of you here. i have been thinking about my

first month on this job. as you know, i try not to follow the speech sometimes that i scripted for. i tried to speak what is on my mind. the thought here is that it is no longer a lunar new year celebration just for our chinese community. what our community now has to offer is really expanding the family to all of these other diverse groups in san francisco. that is what makes this so wonderful. we can share what this joyous occasion means and connect with all the other families of the city, whether african american, latino families, russian families, or all of the some groups of our asian families, it is what makes the city very special. if i have seen anything the first 30 days of this inaugural

apartment that was historic redone by our board of supervisors, it allowed me this special privilege to serve as your mayor. i know that it has been a deepening of my love for the city because of all the different groups that our city has, that it encompasses, that it represents. so it has given me that much more energy, even though i have thousands of meetings, it feels like, every week, every handshake, every praise, acknowledgment about how important the office of the mayor is is reflected in all of the people that have given the good wishes. we want everyone else included in this celebration. we want to make sure that everything that we do represents an opportunity for everyone to share. when i talk about our chinese families, the celebrations we

have, i often mention, our strong values of family. in this city, we want to redefine that as a larger family of the rest of the city. so that is our contribution. i want you to celebrate with me this joyous week. actually, it has already started, as you know. it culminates in a big parade. i want everyone of you out there, rain or shine, because i will be throwing candy out to the kids. this is a wonderful city to live in, do business in, to work in. for all of the asian subgroups that celebrate the lunar new year, thank you very much. [speaking chinese] [applause] and of course, i want to pay tribute to the country where a

lot of our ancestors came from. we value a renewed friendship, not only country to country, but san francisco as a gateway to the whole pacific, cherishes its relationship with china. i think it can be not better expressed than in their relationship with our counsel general. thank you for being here. with that, i would like to present a proclamation on behalf of the city to our counsel general. [applause]

>> a lot of people have been asking me, what does this year mean? it is the year of the rabbit or hare. for those of you that do not follow the signs of animals, the rabbit is all about prosperity. that is what i want this year to mean. peace and prosperity. it is the sharing and growing of that family, expanding that family to include everyone, that is how we prosper. we do not leave anybody behind when it comes to family. thank you very much. happy new year. [applause] >> thank you, mayor edwin lee, thank you, general counsel, for spending some time with us. he is here every year with us. now this year we have not only mayor edwin lee, as an

historical time in san francisco. we have four asian-american members of the board of supervisors with us. as a representative of district 3, i could not be more happy to introduce my district supervisor, the president of the board, supervisor david chiu. [applause] >> good evening, everyone. it is an honor to be with you tonight. i want to wish everyone a happy year of the rabbit. unless you are vietnamese, in which case, i was a very happy year of the cat. after 160 years, this year is truly history. i am honored to serve with you, not just with the diversity that our board of supervisors represents -- and i want to thank ross mirkarimi, david campos, and malia cohen who are here with us today -- but it is

an honor to serve with three other asian-american supervisors. we finally reflect the population statistics that we have here in san francisco. more importantly, it was an incredible honor earlier this year to take part in an historic, unanimous vote for the first time in our city's history to have an elected leader at the top of galt mountain, our first chinese- american mayor, edwin lee. [applause] as i look out onto the audience and i see who we all represent, i see our chinese a brother and sisters, our japanese and korean on and on calls, our cousins from the filipino community, the vietnamese community, the cambodian community, thai

community, burmese community. i want to thank you all for making up the diaspora of our diverse community. and i want to thank those of you who are not asian on the outside but our asian on the inside. [applause] thank you for being part of the richness of who we are common here in san francisco. and i want to thank all of you who are the community leaders of this wonderful city that was founded as col down. we know we have had struggles over the decades and have accomplished many things. but i want to take a moment to say a quick thanks to those of you who are working to make sure that our asian american brothers and sisters, and grandparents who are still living in sro's, i want to thank you for the work you are doing for them. the work we are doing for asian- american brothers and sisters who still today may not have

health insurance or child care. for young people who may not have access to the youth services they need. or to our grandparents who may not have access to the prescription drugs or senior services that they need. we have come a long way but we have a long way to go. i just want to thank you in this year of 2011 are coming together as a community for the work we have done, the work we are doing, and the work we will continue to do. [speaking chinese] thank you very much. [applause] i would like to introduce my asian brothers and sisters on the board of supervisors, if you could come up and say a few words. supervisor eric mar, carmen chu, an hour newsstand first korean-american adviser, -- supervisor jane kim.

>> one of the most happy experiences growing up as a chinese-american was always getting days lece red envelopes. usually, there is money in here, but i think that might be illegal, coming from mayor lee. it is an honor to serve with the three other asian-pacific islander members of the board of supervisors. i know that our colleagues, ross, david, malia, and others are strongly sensitive to the asian-american communities as well. we were joined a few minutes ago by several of our school board members. i know as a former member of the school board -- jane kim as well -- they serve our communities well. one thing that mayor ed lee brought up, for me,