Photos and videos by Martin Locraft

Apologies, golf nerds and gossip mongers, but there aren’t any Tiger Woods photos in this post. No Tiger puns, either. (Alright — maybe just one, a taxonomy. Tiger: Lion Cheetah.) It’s the Year of the Tiger But Not That Tiger. Today in Chinatown, thousands of people partied like it’s 4708, throwing pops into the street and paper streamers in the air. And standing in large, milling crowds.

DCist photographer Martin Locraft nabbed some visuals, including two videos from the event. What you don’t see specifically, or rather what you won’t notice unless you’re looking, is the Taiwanese flag. The Flag of the Republic of China is arguably less familiar to Americans than the Flag of the People’s Republic of China — the latter is anyway infinitely more likely to get a rise out the people in Washington who like to tell you that a Communist has already taken the White House.

The political flair comes courtesy of event’s sponsor, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, one of the nation’s oldest Chinese organizations. The New York Times describes the group as “historically anti-Communist and pro-Taiwanese.” It’s just as well — it probably wouldn’t do to have Communist flags strung up through the capital of the free world. On the other side of the coin, there’s probably one group who would be none too pleased to see thousands of people waving a Taiwanese flag in downtown Washington, D.C.: the Chinese government.