NEW YORK, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- New Yorkers are winding up their Lunar New Year celebrations by staging large-scale parades and gatherings during the weekend.

One such parade was held on Saturday for the first time in Chinatown near Sunset Park in Brooklyn.

Organized by Asian American advocacy group the Asian American Community Empowerment, the parade was designed to celebrate both the Lantern Festival and the 45th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and the United States.

People perform dragon dance and lion dance during a Lantern Festival parade in New York, the United States, Feb. 24, 2024. (Xinhua/Liu Yanan)

The gathering was attended by quite a few elected officials, including New York State Assembly Minority Leader William A. Barclay and New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

"It is nice that we can come here in a bipartisan manner to celebrate the great Asian culture," said Barclay.

Adams noted Brooklyn has one of the largest Chinese communities in the United States and extended his wishes to the community.

Huang Ping, the Chinese Consul General in New York, urged the participants to embrace the future by working together to bring more positive energy into the China-U.S. relationship and build trust to get the relationship back on the right track.

People perform dragon dance and lion dance during a Lantern Festival parade in New York, the United States, Feb. 24, 2024. (Xinhua/Liu Yanan)

Highlights of the celebrations included traditional dragon and lion dances as well as cultural and artistic performances. Thousands of residents lined up the main roads and took part in the celebrations with some wearing traditional costumes.

On Sunday, Better Chinatown USA, a volunteer-based organization dedicated to the improvement of New York City's Chinatown, is scheduled to stage its annual Lunar New Year parade in Chinatown in Lower Manhattan.

"It's very exciting to be here as the first annual Brooklyn Lantern Festival troupe," said Edmund Durso, an instructor of lion and dragon dances, and the founder of a Chinese martial arts school in Northvale, New Jersey.

Durso told Xinhua that his team has performed at a dozen events celebrating the Year of Dragon and would also appear at the parade in Chinatown in Manhattan on Sunday.

The New York metropolitan area had a Chinese population of over 800,000 in 2019, ranking on the top of major U.S. areas with big Chinese American communities, according to a report by Pew Research Center in April, 2021.