California governor celebrates Chinese New Year with San Francisco Chinese

San Francisco, Jan. 29, --- California Governor Jerry Brown, Chinese Consul General Linquan Luo and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee joined local Chinese Americans in San Francisco to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year on Friday.

 As a routine, the Chinese Consulate General held an annually new year reception today to look back on the past year and welcome the new year with Chinese Americans in San Francisco.

Consul General Luo briefly summarized the achievements. He said that the year of 2015 is of great significance for China-US relations, highlighted by President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the United States in September.

He said that "I sincerely hope that the overseas Chinese in the Bay Area, as President Xi Jining addressed in Seattle to the Chinese community, actively integrate yourselves in the US mainstream society, help to boost China-US cooperation, popularize the Chinese culture, deepen American people's understanding about China." He also send his best wishes to all the Chinese American communities within the consulate's area.

This is the first time that Governor Brown attended the new year reception at the Consulate General. He said that there are many issues between China and US, but there is not any problem between California and China. He said that "Chinese President Xi and US President Obama made an agreement on climate change, which encouraged other countries and paved the way for the Paris agreement. It shows the power of Chinese and US cooperation to help not only the two countries but also help solve problems throughout the whole world."

He said that since China and US has cooperated to deal with climate change, "let's reduce all the damn nuclear weapons that everybody is building up."

Ed Lee, mayor of San Francisco wishes all the Chinese a great and prosperous year in the year of Monkey.

More than 500 Chinese Americans, local business leaders and representatives from American communities attended the reception.