Echo Park festival's awkward lotus position

The dragon boats are still speeding across Echo Park Lake, the drums are beating and the scent of chicken satay and papaya salad wafts through the crowds.

It's the lotuses that are gone, dead after gracing the lake with their broad leaves and delicate flowers for decades.

Visitors stood solemnly Saturday, alone and in small groups, gazing at the empty water as if paying their respects at a gravesite.

Mysteriously, the lotuses failed to bloom this summer for the first time in the 31-year history of the Echo Park Lotus Festival. What was once called the nation's largest lotus display has simply vanished.

And though the three-day festival opened as planned Friday to honor Los Angeles' Asian heritage, dozens of residents complained Saturday that something felt awry.

Over and over, they sounded the same lament.

Where are the lotuses?

"I want to see the flowers," begged Esther Barrientos, 6, of Echo Park. Her mother had promised her a field of lotuses, all pink and cream and elegant in a sea of giant green leaves. What she got was a pond of dirty water.

Cary Levine, 35, of Los Angeles brought his girlfriend to the park, eager to show her the blooms. He had paused just north of the lake's edge. "There's no lotuses," he said.

His girlfriend, Jessica Rosenblum, 32, of Long Beach gave him a sympathetic hug. "Oh, honey," she said.

Jesse Diaz, 12, thought he saw a flower shoot in the turgid water, only to recognize it as a small green plastic clip of the sort used to fasten bread bags. He lives near Echo Park, and he came expecting flowers.

"It looks really lame and plain. This time, it's not fun," he said.

For six years, Linh Duong, public affairs director of the Chinese American Museum in L.A., has enjoyed a ringside view of the blooms from the museum's booth at the north end of the lotus beds. Now, she is the first person whom disappointed visitors turn to.

"People are very bewildered, and they don't understand why the lotuses aren't here," said Duong, 30, who grew up in Chinatown and used to run around the blooming beds as a high school student.

She finds their absence disconcerting. "It gives you a sense of the passing of time and how things change," she said. "It's very sad. It's heartbreaking."