Cambodia Town Parade, Culture Festival returns for 16th year this weekend

by Khmer Times
April 5, 2024

Crowds line Anaheim Boulevard on Sunday, Apr. 2, 2023, for the 15th Annual Cambodia Town Parade & Culture Festival in Long Beach (Photo by Howard Freshman, Contributing Photographer)

The 16th annual Cambodia Town Parade and Cultural, a celebration of the country’s new year, will return to Long Beach this weekend.

The free event will kick off with the parade at the intersection of Anaheim Street and Cherry Avenue on Sunday, April 7 at 10:30 a.m. after an interfaith program, including a traditional blessing.

The parade will travel about a half mile to MacArthur Park, 1321 Anaheim St., where a cultural festival — featuring traditional Cambodian dance, ancient martial arts demonstrations, crafts, food, and more — will get underway from about 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Cambodia Town is centred around about a one-mile stretch of Anaheim Street between Atlantic and Junipero avenues.

Long Beach became a second home for Cambodians in the early 1980s — when hundreds of thousands of Cambodian refugees flocked to the United States seeking safety from the brutality of the communist Khmer Rouge.

The resulting Cambodian Genocide killed nearly 2 million people. Long Beach is now home to the largest population of Cambodians outside of the country itself, with about 500,000 nearly Cambodians living in the city.

This year’s Cambodia Town Parade and Culture Festival will feature live demonstrations of ancient Angkor ceramics by master ceramist Yary Livan.

Livan, according to his website, was one of only three master ceramists to survive the Cambodian Genocide — and the only master Cambodian ceramists currently living in the United States.

His work will be exhibited at the Manzanar Gamboa Theater, 1323 Gundry Ave., on Sunday as part of the Cambodia Town Parade and Culture Festival.

Livan will also host a special workshop in Long Beach on Monday, April 8, according to his website.

The first Cambodian New Year Parade, meanwhile, got underway in April 2005 after years of advocacy from community members, according to the event’s website, who wanted to ensure their culture and heritage wouldn’t be forgotten in America.

The event draws thousands to Cambodia Town every year — and offers a way for the community to celebrate the new year, honour and carry on Khmer culture and traditions, and share it with others.

This year, the event’s theme is to “Celebrate a Culture of Peace and Unity” — hopes to emphasize the important of celebrating Long Beach’s diversity.


“The festival and parade are a great celebration that reminds of the importance to come together in the spirit of love,” Mayor Rex Richardson wrote in a Monday, April 1 letter to the parade’s organizers, “and compassion to all dimensions of diversity.”Long Beach Press Telegram