Krewe of Mung Beans 2023

Feb 20

The White Tiger Lion Dance Team. Photo by Dung “Donkey” Nguyen

City Park, New Orleans, LA.

It’s Monday (Lundi Gras) morning, and I was prepping to engage in more Mardi Gras festivities. I’m still exhausted from the Bacchus Ball but I wanted to power through since there’s only 2 days of Mardi Gras left. The first thing on the docket was the Krewe of Mung Beans during the Dead Beans parade. Its their first year parading and the members were mostly (if not all) Vietnamese. Like with all things lately, maybe this is something I want to document.

The original plan was to park myself at a spot, take a few photos, then prep to go to the Orpheus parade later that evening. I arrive a few minutes early to scope out the crowd and to my surprise, a few friends were members of the krewe. After doing a bit of catching up with said friends, the krewe starts to roll and I begin to take a few photos. I walk a few more blocks to get additional photos then ended up just walking the entire route with them.

At the end of the route, we were joined by the Panorama Brass Band and they provided some additional sounds for the White Tiger Lion Dance team (as evidenced here via Jordan Hirsch on Twitter). The experience was quite surreal. And I still made it to the Orpheus parade.