NEW YORK, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- About 500,000 New Yorkers braved the rain to attend the 2018 Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations in the Big Apple's Chinatown on Sunday.

As one of the largest Chinese Lunar New Year parades in North America, the event featured impressive displays of Chinese culture including marching bands, colorful floats, traditional dancing dragons and prancing lions.

"It's like the Asian version of Times Square," said Christopher Tan with the parade's organizer Better Chinatown USA. "We got lions, we got dragons, we got opera singers, we got a whole bunch of people out for the celebrations."

The grand street party concluded the New York City's annual Spring Festival celebrations which began on Feb. 16, the first day of the Year of the Dog.

On that day, Grace Meng, the U.S. Congresswoman of New York, introduced a resolution that urges the U.S. House of Representatives to officially recognize the Chinese Lunar New Year as a holiday.