East Asian communities across New Zealand are gearing up for the most important event on their cultural calendar.

Joanne Chin and her brother-in-law thought they were having a Chinese New Year party for family and friends, until it ended up being a 160-person festival.

Everyone is still expected to bring dishes to next month’s party, which will be held at the local community center with a rocking castle, firecrackers and a lion dance show.

The highlight is lou yee sang, a Malaysian and Singaporean tradition of throwing a raw fish salad over colorful vegetable slices in a sweet, sticky dressing. Eating afterward is optional.

“We were thinking about 50, maybe 60 at most,” said Chin, a mother of three who runs a dumpling and bao restaurant in downtown Auckland.

“We invite family and close friends, they ask more friends and friends from friends. Then boom!”

The overwhelming response to Joanne’s surprise festival is a common thread running through many Chinese New Year celebrations this year.

Asians in New Zealand celebrate on the spot, unable to travel to their home country or anywhere else for the celebration due to closed borders and travel restrictions. Many come together or reach out to Kiwi friends to celebrate.

“We also have non-Asian friends coming,” Chin said, “like my Samoan colleague and his wife from the Cook Islands.”

The festival has many names

Chinese New Year, or more precisely Chinese New Year, marks the first day of the lunar calendar, the most important event in the Chinese cultural calendar.

Known as Spring Festival in China, Tet in Vietnam, Seollal in Korea, it is celebrated in many parts of East and Southeast Asia, and in global cities with a significant Chinese diaspora.

The first day of the New Year will fall on February 12, 2021. It is the Year of the Ox, which is known as the hardest working animal in Chinese horoscopes.

Celebrations vary between cultures and regions but there are major similarities. Visiting friends and family on the day, red packets of lucky money for children, and the most important meal of the year – reunion dinner – on New Year’s Eve.

But before all that, a deep clear spring was ahead.

“We need to clean the house before New Year’s and not during the actual celebrations, because cleaning can really sweep away all your luck,” explained Victor Diem, vice chairman of the Vietnam Community based in Wellington in New Zealand.

Diem is expecting at least 350 people at a Vietnamese community celebration in Wellington on January 31, double attendance in the years before Covid – because people are here.

Chinese New Year is not a public holiday in New Zealand and the party atmosphere is often lacking, Diem said, so in the years before Covid-19 many Vietnamese used to come home for Tet.

Seollal is also a simple family affair for many Korean communities in New Zealand, said Imsoo Kim.

His family tradition is making mandu, or Korean dumplings, said the counselor and father of two.

“My boys [both in their 20s] going home for Seollal and we made dumplings together. The saying goes, whoever makes well-shaped dumplings gets a handsome partner, “he said with a chuckle.

Freedom to celebrate

We celebrate freedom to celebrate, said Linda Lim, one of the organizers of the Chinese New Year Festival in Wellington marking its 20th edition this year.

“People feel very fortunate to have the freedom to gather with family and friends over their meals, which is really the essence of Chinese New Year celebrations.”

If New Zealand remains at alert level 1, the festival will host a street parade of its flagship, a food and crafts market and fireworks in Wellington CBD in February.

But the organizer is ready for any warning level changes, including a fully digital program for warning level 4.

“The pandemic has permanently changed the art and landscape of events,” said Lim, referring to the additional challenges of organizing large events with a health and safety and risk assessment plan.

But there is a sense of recovery and positivity, leaving behind a “shabby” Year of the Rat, said Kai Luey, chairman of the Auckland Chinese Community Center.

Equally important is the celebration of the resilience of Asian societies that have withstood a crisis far worse than the pandemic, said Diem.

“The Vietnamese have suffered years of war and hardships.

“Many of us are grateful for the social welfare, political and economic structures in New Zealand which have looked after its people and been a source of healing for those affected by the pandemic.”

Auckland celebrations

The Auckland celebrations kick off today (Saturday, 30 January) with the annual Auckland Chinese Community Center festival and a market day at ASB Showgrounds in Epsom.

The city’s iconic Lantern Festival is also scheduled to return in February after last year’s cancellation took place for the first time on Auckland’s waterfront.

Show producer Eric Ngan described the “cosmic coincidence” of the hustle and bustle of the city center, the accessibility of public transport, and the proximity to the American Cup Village that brought the festival to Auckland Harbor.

“It is very different from the garden and lawn festivals of previous years,” he said, “Hundreds of lanterns, installations, shows and food, but with the aesthetic of an urban port.”

Also for the first time, this year’s festival will have daytime sessions on weekends, useful for families with young children “who tend to get irritable and angry at 7 o’clock,” said Ngan.

Children are one of the traditional New Year’s focuses, and making them happy is the key to a surprise private festival in Chin.

“I’m a mother,” she said with a smile.

“It’s important to have activities for the kids to have fun at, so parents can have fun too.”

She is a born organizer and loves to see events – and people – get together.

“Making something out of nothing, the energy of the one who speaks. It’s magical.”

WHAT HAPPENED
• Chinese New Year Festival and Market Day, ASB Showgrounds, Auckland, Saturday, 30 January

• Wellington Lunar New Year Festival, various locations, February 13-14

• Auckland Lantern Festival, Captain Cook and Marsden Wharves, Auckland, 25-28 February