It’s “Lunar New Year” now. Of course, there are many lunar calendars with differing starts of the year but let’s just pave over that to Frankenstein together some generic nonspecific holiday because Gyna bad.
It’s “Lunar New Year” now. Of course, there are many lunar calendars with differing starts of the year but let’s just pave over that to Frankenstein together some generic nonspecific holiday because Gyna bad.
Calling it Lunar New Year is more inclusive. I can’t tell if this is a bit or not.
It is not “more inclusive”. Unless you think it’s also more inclusive to stop calling Ramadan “Ramadan” and start calling it “the fasting”. In fact, it ignores the diversity of different lunar new years in different cultures.
Chinese New Year is a distinct, Chinese holiday. It is not the same as the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, for example.
In order to conform with the new extreme anti-China zeitgeist, references specifically to the Chinese Lunar New Year are being replaced with the generic term “Lunar New Year”.
My impression is that they’re using Lunar New Year as a way to include all the cultures the celebrate it, not as a way to be Sinophobic.
Do you think they should just list all of them?
I find it hard to accept that saying Lunar New Year is more Sinophobic than not saying Tet is exclusive of Vietnamese people.
When Chinatown celebrations are having to use “Lunar New Year” instead of “Chinese New Year” due to fears of being branded Chicom agents here to kill white people, it is Sinophobic.
The default assumption when discussing the “Lunar New Year” is still the Chinese Lunar New Year. The only difference is you don’t have to use the word “Chinese”. Its adoption is being pushed not to include other holidays but to avoid associations with China or assumptions of evil Chicom disloyalty. In any case, even if one were to assume this change was made in good faith, it does not make sense to erase the differences between culturally distinct holidays just because they’re Asian and they involve the zodiac. They are different holidays. Are we supposed to fix the underrepresentation of other lunar holidays by erasing their distinct character?
Would you accept turning Christmas, Kwanzaa and Hanukkah into “Winter Holiday” as if they were the same and then almost exclusively using it to refer to Christmas?
Alright I’m going to take a step back: is there some specific event you’re referring to?
No? It’s a general trend. Chinatowns, whom I highly, highly doubt are celebrating Tet, are having to switch to “Lunar New Year”.
It’s like how the Russian bakery near my place had to put up a stand with Ukraine poster because they got vandalized and had their windows broken.
Similarly, the rise in Sinophobic hate crimes is closely correlated with the current political climate. Associating yourself with China invites accusations of disloyalty similar to the situation faced by Japanese-Americans in the lead up to and during WWII. You know how westerners freak out when they see non-Christians in traditional religious clothing? It’s not quite on the same level, but this is getting close to concealing that you are, for example, a Muslim and just saying “I’m religious” so as not to be targeted for it. Or saying “I’m partaking in a religious fast” during Ramadan.
They are having to avoid specific references to their own culture and having to substitute a generic term.
Regardless of matters of self-identification, the principal issue is that westerners, who have up until recently used “Chinese New Year”, are now using “Lunar New Year” to refer to the same specific holiday in order to avoid mentioning China. It is not more inclusive of other Lunar New Years because, in the minds of the vast majority of westerners, it still refers to the Chinese New Year. This is easy to tell with regards to Tet as the zodiac is not exactly the same.
I don’t think I share your opinion. In my city, where there are large numbers of both Chinese and Vietnamese people, there are specific events for CNY, specific events for Tet, and general events meant to be inclusive of both. In my experience, the east Asian diaspora populations in the US express a significant amount of solidarity with each other. Through this lens I see the “rebranding” as a willingness to share and to acknowledge that the Chinese aren’t the only ones who celebrate a new year at this time. Part of this is that I think large amounts of the populations are now second generation. They went to school here and grew up with Vietnamese or Chinese neighbors and friends who they could share (in some respects) a holiday with. The Asian neighborhoods in my city are very heterogenous.
In my opinion, this is more like people starting to say “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas”. I think the change came from an instinct to be inclusive rather than attempting to hide because of the rise in anti-Asian violence. Most younger east Asian-Americans in the US are liberal and have, like white liberals, adopted the language of inclusion.
I doubt you’ll agree, but my outlook on it isn’t as dim as yours. Anecdotally, when I’m with my Chinese and Vietnamese friends in mixed company, they (and myself) tend to simply ask each other what they’re doing for “new year” rather than bothering to say CNY for the Chinese friends or Tet for the Vietnamese friend.
Again, The Lunar rebranding is principally viewed from the outside POV. Of course Chinese people are not going to call the holiday “Chinese New Year” because it’s just the New Year.
The Lunar New Year is the Chinese New Year for the vast, vast majority of non-SE Asian Americans. CNN and company is not referring to “Lunar New Year” out of the goodness of their hearts but rather to further entrench the idea of ties to China as acts of treason. This is like if “Happy Holidays” referred to Christmas, and only Christmas.
If you go to most American calendar apps now, turning on Chinese Holidays gives you “Lunar New Year”. I think this is a key example.
I don’t think we’re going to agree on this.
Happy New Year.
This is not remotely true in my experience. At best, it’s sorta true if you’re talking about 2nd+ generations. For the 1st generation, a lot of the country beefs like China vs Korea traveled with them. I’ve had Korean people say that parts of Manchuria should be part of Korea, Chinese people constantly shitting on Japan for what they did during WWII, and so on. A lot of the provincial beefs Chinese people have with each other also traveled with them, so northerners vs southerners, waishengren vs benshengren, the Mainland vs Taiwan vs Hong Kong. Pretty much every specific East Asian group has their own church or temple, so the South Korean Christians go to their own church, the Taiwanese benshengren go to their own church, the Hong Kongers go to their own temple. There isn’t a generic Asian church or temple that people of Asian descent go to.
Your experience is only Chinese and Vietnamese, and that honestly has more to do with the Chinese diaspora being traditionally from the South and part of the Vietnamese diaspora being Hoa, which is the ethnic Han diaspora in Vietnam that also came from the South. So, a Cantonese diaspora could get along with a Vietnamese diaspora with the Hoa/Cantonese Vietnamese acting as a bridge between the two communities. Mix in the more white-washed 2nd+ generation, and it’s not hard to see intermingling between the two communities with Canto-Viet families that are still pretty in touch with their Asian roots. But a bunch of Beijingers or Northeasterners isn’t going to mix well with the Vietnamese diaspora at all.
I think the 2nd generation bit is important, and may be the reason the nomenclature is shifting. 2nd generation asian-americans are making up a larger and larger portion of the asian community in the US.
At my college, by far the largest social club was AAA (Asian-American Association) and it was similarly pretty heterogenous, and they’d throw “Lunar New Year” events owing to their diverse membership.
Hilarious there are libs in here arguing with this and supporting sinophobia under the guise of “inclusivity”
Coming from exactly who you would expect it to come from too
The problem is that the US’s conception of Lunar New Year is basically Chinese New Year, so it’s very obvious that the push has more to do with malding over China than being inclusive. For example, giving kids red envelopes is largely done in Chinese New Year and Vietnamese New Year (Tet). For Japanese New Year, they have a totally different style of envelope and for Malaysia, the envelopes are green. So, if your “Lunar New Year” is just giving out envelopes of a particular design with a particular color, then it’s more whitewashing than inclusivity. Different Lunar New Year has different traditions. Chinese New Year and Tet might share the same color envelopes, but the Chinese zodiac and Vietnamese zodiac are different. Last year was Year of the Rabbit in China but Year of the Cat in Vietnam, so if your “Lunar New Year” celebrates the year of the rabbit last year, then “Lunar New Year” isn’t Tet because the rabbit isn’t part of the Vietnamese zodiac. And as a final point, the Lunar New Year isn’t universal, meaning it can fall on different days depending on what country you’re talking about. So, it isn’t a given that Chinese New Year and Tet fall on the same day and if your “Lunar New Year” perfectly matches the date of Chinese New Year, then “Lunar New Year” is just Chinese New Year.
You can see this in the 2023 Lunar New Year article from CNN: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/lunar-new-year-2023-illustrated-guide-hnk-intl/index.html
“Saying goodbye to the Tiger, we enter the Year of the Rabbit on January 22, 2023.” Goes back to what I said about Tet being the Year of the Cat, so they’re already excluding a particular lunar new year.
The first graphic is just the basic aesthetics associated with Chinese New Year. Red is only the definitive lunar new year color for Chinese New Year and Tet. It’s not particularly relevant for the other lunar new years. Eastern dragons aren’t that prominent in the other lunar new years either. Some of the other zodiacs don’t even have the dragon.
The spring banner graphic. I mean, it’s just stuff written in Chinese. People in Korea aren’t hanging up red banners with Hanja lol. I don’t even know if those Chinese phrases are meaningful in Korean Hanja.
The food is just Chinese food. Every lunar new year has their own particular set of dishes to consume with their own particular symbolic meaning. Like, it would actually be inclusive if they had a dish for each different lunar new year, but it’s just Chinese food for totally-not Chinese New Year.
Going back to what I said earlier about red envelopes, that’s largely a Chinese New Year and Tet thing.
Xin nian kuai le and gung hei faat coi are just greetings in varieties of Chinese. One Japanese greeting during Japanese New Year per Wikipedia is kotoshi mo yoroshiku o-negai-shimasu. For Tet, Vietnamese people would say Chúc mừng năm mới. It isn’t really inclusive if you only have traditional Chinese greetings in your article about not-Chinese New Year.
Goes back to my earlier point about different Asian countries having different zodiacs. You can’t really have a one-size fits all zodiac, so they settled for the Chinese zodiac.
At the end of the article, we finally have acknowledgment that other Asian countries other than China exist. Like, they had a grand total of two sentences devoted to lunar new year traditions that aren’t related to Chinese New Year.
Taken by itself, you could chalk this up to dumbass white people thinking Asia is just China, but given the geopolitical realities between the US and China and the role of MSM as a component of the state apparatus, as shown in the ridiculous weather balloon saga, we absolutely cannot give these dumbass white people the benefit of the doubt.
I would personally chalk it up more to the liberal language of inclusiveness rather than Sinophobia. I bet most liberals in the US are aware that the lunar new year is celebrated in other cultures, but know very little about those other celebrations. In this light I can see the instinct to be inclusive and then getting details wrong. I expect they see it as a “I should say happy holidays rather than Merry Christmas” sort of thing.
What’s the adage? Never attribute to malice what could just as easily be attributed to ignorance?
Little personal anecdote: I used to live in the Bay Area and the town would put up banners that said “gung hay fat choy (sic)” on the lampposts around new year. Tonight I was coming home from the airport in my new city which has a much larger Vietnamese population and the little traffic advisory sign said “chuc mung nam moi”.
Liberal language of inclusiveness and cultural melting pots is white supremacist and genocidal. The melting pot is a play put on in company towns where all the indigenous and different cultures would wear outfits from their original culture, go through “the crucible” where “all ethnicity is melted away” and come out the other side as identical clean cut Americans in suits.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Melting_Pot_(play)
Flattening cultural differences and making different cultures into one big blob is destruction of culture and genocidal in nature. Especially when it’s aimed at Asians and Chinese in 2024 you should be extremely suspect of White Liberals and diaspora Asians who have internalized White Supremacy and sinophobia conflating all Asians and destroying their culture and de-chinafying all Chinese culture.
This is why we teach tolerance and respect and honoring of different cultures. You should be interested to learn of other cultures, there should be healthy and organic cultural exchange, but active efforts to homogenize various cultures into one should be rejected.
Except the Chinese calendar is not lunar, it’s lunisolar. Also, dozens of other regions, cultures, and religions have their own lunar calendars which have new year’s at a different time.
So by being “inclusive”, not only is the term inaccurate, it also erases the lunar new years of other cultures.
I don’t get it either. I’m from one of these countries that celebrate the Lunar New Year but live in the imperial core, and I’ve been to parties or gatherings with a mix of East asians celebrating and I don’t think anyone there took issue with it being called Lunar New Year as a quick reference to the different holidays around the same time. You can phone your parents and use your own lingo then but when returning to English it really is no big deal?
I get the “Chinese” in CNY being a boogeyman thing for western whitewashed people, but personally as someone from East Asia I think Hexbear who think this is 100% a Sinophobic thing should log off and go to a new year party.
No it’s specifically made to de-Chinafy it and is clearly done via sinophobia due to the recent push.
Using “inclusion” to bulldoze and destroy culture is disgusting. It’s more inclusive to make Hanukkah non-Jewish amirite? Why don’t we just call it Candelabrah and make it non-denominational for everyone to be more inclusive :)
In this case, it’s about an astronomical event. The Muslim calendar also uses it.
Are red envelopes and Chinese zodiac animals also an astronomical event? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t copy Chinese New Year verbatim and then change it’s name to remove it’s specific Chinese character.
Yeah, fair enough. I haven’t seen the celebration yet.
fuck off back to whatever hole you crawled out of you cultureless neoliberal drone.
Touché
Looks like Steam is doing the same thing. This does feel just a little bit like the War on Christmas complaint, though.
Christians aren’t an oppressed minority group or subject of colonization. Christmas is as dominant as ever, it’s not under threat or being attacked in any serious way.
Also, the war on Christmas complaint would have validity if a bunch of people from another dominant culture were trying to take it over and rename it and strip it of everything specifics. Having a broad term “happy holidays” for polite conversation that covers multiple holidays (Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice) is fine and different than specifically taking Christmas and renaming it and doing a massive push everywhere to stop calling it Christmas.
These are fair points.
The Islamic Calendar doesn’t celebrate new years on the same date as Chinese New Years. How fucking stupid are you?
What’s this rage really about?