Look at the picture above carefully: It's not the Chinese New Year parade.

It's a young African American man taking off a lion dancer mask as part of the St. Patrick's Day parade, and it's one of the photos and stories in "Under the Dragon: California's New Culture," a richly illustrated look at the complicated and changing ethnic experience in the Bay Area.

"We were reading the same statistics that everyone else was in 2001," says co-author Fred Setterberg, who wrote the book with photographer Lonny Shavelson, "that California would have a majority population of minorities. But we didn't have any sense what that would mean on the ground. It was a demographic story, without any life or blood on the ground."

So Setterberg and Shavelson spent the next 31/2 years exploring the nooks and crannies of the Bay Area, going into neighborhoods, religious centers and community gatherings from San Francisco to Fremont.

"We both thought we knew the Bay Area well - I was born here and Lonny has lived here for 35 years - but again and again, we found surprises."

Setterberg says that organizing this book was perhaps the biggest struggle. After spending years investigating, they had countless notes and photographs. Eventually, they decided to focus on individuals and stories rather than write a conventional cultural critique. They chose to do seven stories, with accompanying images, and 80 photographs with information-rich captions.

The stories capture the crazy mix of people that is the Bay Area. Setterberg spent time with an Iranian Jewish psychologist who, with a translator, led a therapy group for Cambodian men traumatized by the Khmer Rouge regime; a group of Buddhist converts in Oakland, most of whom were African American; a white minister who preaches in an African American church; and Latino immigrants from Mexico who were studying Islam.

Setterberg and Shavelson also found examples of another demographic trend - increasing racial and class-based segregation. But Setterberg says that after completing this project, he is hopeful about our cultural state.

"We were met again and again with openness and generosity," he says. "We were invited into people's homes and their churches. Doing this book gave me a much stronger and better-informed conviction that the American experiment can work."

Readings: 7:30 p.m. today. Modern Times Bookstore, 888 Valencia St., S.F. (415) 282-9246); 7 p.m. Fri. Cody's Books, 1730 Fourth St., Berkeley. (510) 559-9500). www.underthedragon.com.

- Reyhan Harmanci, rharmanci@sfchronicle.com