What lunar new year means these days in the USA?
Not sure about you, being a Chinese living in the United States for over 10 years, I have experienced that year over year, the atmosphere and festive vibe of lunar new year has been stronger and stronger. In this article, we will chat about what's the underlying movement beneath it.
The rise of Asian American identity
First of all, it's being mostly called lunar new year if the audience is from diverse cultural background; and only in a most Chinese people context, it's being called Chinese new year. The reason is that this festival is not only celebrated in great China culture, but also celebrated in Korea, and Vietnam. Also, technically, it's based on the lunar calendar – begins with the first new moon of the lunar calendar and ends on the first full moon of the lunar calendar, 15 days later.
Over the past decade, Asian cultural groups have significantly elevated and stamped their cultural identity within American society. Therefore, this cultural group benefits from celebrations like Lunar New Year to showcase their uniqueness and honor their diverse cultural heritage.
It's a great culture symbol anyway
First, the time of the lunar new year comes up at the right timing. During the typical western holiday season, lots of events wouldn't be setup in the workplace or school as holiday break has already started; however, lunar new year typically land at the beginning of February, when people started to memorize the holiday festivity again after working for a month after new year. In addition, lots of celebration could be done in a workplace or school environment. Like in my workplace, we held an event and also include the whole family attending.
Secondly, though we know most of the US people would think China as a competitor, people with some education could easily distinguish the people, the culture and the administration. Lunar new year has some quite interesting culture symbols, like the zodiac, the meaning behind them, the lion and dragon dance, the red colors decoration, the lanterns and read envelops. All of them could be well presented and being the welcoming culture symbols for Chinese culture.
During the last decade, we have seen the rise of Korean culture world wide, via K-Pop and Korean drama tv shows. There're also some quite interesting elements in Chinese cultures, like the history, the panda, and these days, some new movies and shows. As Covid restrictions had been long gone and a more welcoming atmosphere prevails, an increasing number of people outside China have the opportunity to experience the richness of its culture via traveling or activities at their local environments.
Looking forward to year of the dragon and I am starting to accumulate stuff into my shopping cart on Temu for the year of the snake 😺
