LIMA – Peru, the Latin American country with the second largest Chinese community after Brazil, continued on Saturday Chinese New Year celebrations with music, food and colorful parades through the streets of Lima as revelers welcomed the Year of the Dog.

The center of the party was on Capon Street, the heart of the Chinese district of the Peruvian capital, where dragons and lions of different colors paraded, visiting the different businesses run by Chinese to bring them prosperity in this year 4716 of the Chinese calendar.

The creatures advanced through crowds that awaited them as they held bamboo branches, considered a lucky plant for Chinese New Year.

Lucky symbols were seen everywhere in the celebrations, in particular the golden figures of dogs to symbolize the New Year, including those of the Peruvian dog, also known as “calato” (naked in Quechua) for its lack of hair, and regarded here a symbol of the fusion between Chinese and local culture.

In the gastronomic capital of Latin America, food could not be left out, since Lima is the cradle of chifa, a culinary style that fuses Chinese and Peruvian traditions and whose restaurants abound in all neighborhoods of the city, with rice as the main ingredient.