For one night each year around the beginning of February, junior Zoe Chu’s house is packed with chatting parents, excited kids and a kitchen full of guests’ dishes. Her mom additionally prepares dozens of plates to round out the buffet-style table, and the house is loud with chatter and clinking utensils.
Instead of the annual packed-house, packed-stomach party, this year the Chu’s will be celebrating Chinese New Year alone.
“It’s just going to be my family, just the four of us,” Chu said. “It’s going to be a little sad.”
For over a billion people around the world, including some East students, Lunar New Year looks very different this year. A family- and food-oriented holiday in essence, travel restrictions and other pandemic precautions have forced celebrations to adapt.
One of the main aspects of the festival is reuniting with relatives, especially extended family who typically work and live far away from each other. Freshman Giselle Li used to go to her grandparents’ house in Jinan, a city in eastern China, to celebrate the New Year with many of their relatives who she only sees at this time of year.
“It’s kind of like Christmas,” Li said. “Every part has their own customs, but we usually just eat dumplings and get some lanterns, and we have a lot of fireworks which is pretty cool. We also watch the New Year’s Gala. It’s really fun.”
One of her family’s special customs is making dumplings together, and putting a coin in one. Whoever ends up getting the lucky dumpling has good fortune for the year. Li says that although it is just her and her mom in Chapel Hill this year, they will still make them to recreate some sense of normalcy.
“Usually I go to my grandparents house and we have a bunch of people, so it’s more competitive and we get pretty full,” Li said. “But this year is going to be me and my mom. Higher chance of getting [the coin], maybe.”
Chu’s family also enjoys making dumplings with friends during a typical Chinese New Year, but Chu says they probably won’t do it when it’s just them alone.
“Dumplings are like a special occasion thing. You gotta get the meat and the dough, you gotta sit down, you chat with everyone, you boil it and then everyone’s like, yay!” Chu said. “I’m gonna miss eating dumplings this year.”
Among regional traditions, senior Grace Koh says one of her family’s favorites is Southeast Asian in origin, because they lived in Singapore for many years. It’s typically done in restaurants or in big groups, so it’s unlikely to happen this year.
“It’s called Lo Hei, a Cantonese word for tossing and mixing stuff. There is a pit in front, and there will be stuff like sashimi, nuts, sauce and a bit of everything, also noodles. You’d be tossing everything up in the air,” Koh said. “And people say, the higher you toss the more fortuitous it will be, and everyone will be shouting in Cantonese, [a phrase that] means to bring a lot of luck to the family.”
Instead, this year Koh says she will be having a low-key celebration with her immediate relatives in North Carolina. She says she will still make sure to keep two of her favorite parts of the holiday: the decorative red packets given to younger family members, stuffed with cash, and the cookies.
“Let’s put it this way: the first [favorite] would be getting that packet from my relatives,” Koh said. “I think more and more people are switching to e-red packets so I’ll be getting money through electronic platforms instead, going into my bank account.”
Koh says she and her mom have also baked some of her favorite Chinese New Year cookies, such as pineapple tarts, cashew nut cookies and buttery coconut cookies.
“There are not a ton of them in Chapel Hill, so since I have more time at home I decided to make some of it,” Koh said. “It’s far from the actual standard but good enough to satisfy me.”
Many people who have had to find ways to dial back parts of the celebration say they have come closer to the essence of the holiday.
“It’s just a time to come together with family and friends, and just celebrate. Eat lots of food, and have fun and take a step back, especially when we’re living in the States,” Chu said. “It should be like, ‘Hey, this is our culture we gotta celebrate a little, have a little bit of fun.’”
For Chu and others, this year’s absence of some traditional customs and the adjustment of others led to a realization of the holiday’s value, and what it added to their lives before.
“I never realized how big the celebration was or how much it meant to me, until we hit this year and just like, ‘Oh, I won’t be seeing people. Oh, we won’t be doing that thing,’” Chu said. “It’s okay. Maybe next year.”
Photo by Caroline Chen/The ECHO
