New York, NY —
We are midway through the 15-day Chinese New Year, which is being celebrated across the city. WNYC's Arun Venugopal took the opportunity to celebrate the festival with those who know it best.
It’s the first day of the Chinese New Year and Patrick Kwan is expecting a little cash.
PATRICK: Some of the fun of Chinese New Year is actually guessing what certain people will actually give you.
REPORTER: We’re in Chinatown, in lower Manhattan. Patrick’s job is to promote the neighborhood, but right now he has personal business to take care of. A few minutes ago, he bumped into a friend of his father, who pulled out a little red envelope and handed it over. He guesses how much money is in the envelope.
PATRICK: I think it’s 20. And I’m going to open it now to see how much it is.
SOUND OF ENVELOPE BEING OPENED
PATRICK: Woah! It’s a hundred! Wow, nice.
REPORTER: Clearly the New Year has gotten off to a good start.
PATRICK: Nice. Okay. Great.
REPORTER: With cash in hand, we leave the bubble tea shop we’ve been sitting in. We set out for a vegetarian Chinese restaurant on Mott Street so he can order some food for his family’s New Year’s feast, later that day. Along the way, we step into a small Buddhist temple. It’s packed.
PATRICK: You wish for the wellness of your family the next year. It’s not for wishing I want to win the lottery – maybe 20 days later you wish for that.
REPORTER: The Chinese New Year is a fifteen-day festival. It starts on a New Moon and ends on the Full Moon, with the Lantern Festival. Different Asian cultures celebrate the festival in their own ways, but here in Chinatown, on the first day, lion dancers roam the streets, surrounded by tourists.
SOUND OF LION DANCERS – DRUMBEATS
REPORTER: The festival has changed in recent years. Fireworks have been replaced by air pressured tubes that shoot colored confetti high into the air.
REPORTER: The tubes sell for 8 dollars, and people can’t seem to get enough of them. By late morning, the neighborhood is coated in yellow, green and red bits of paper. A light rain falls, and the runoff from the paper turns Mott Street into one long, tie-dyed puddle.
REPORTER: Patrick and I arrive at Buddha Bodai, a vegetarian restaurant on Mott Street. The restaurant gets a lot of business on this day – customers who are trying to limit their meat intake on the first day of the New Year. Patrick, however, is vegan – so pretty much anything he’s going to eat at his family’s get-together is going to come from here.
PATRICK: Vegetarian food actually has a really long history. How it started was some of the emperors for religious reasons – if there’s a flood, if there’s an earthquake, or anything bad happens, they blame it on the imperial family. It means someone has done something wrong. Some of them would go I’ll be vegetarian for the next 3 years or the next 7 years in order for a better harvest or for an earthquake to stop.
REPORTER: The restaurant has run out of some of the items Patrick wanted to order. But he’s happy to see that one of his favorites, Sau Gok, or Little Crescents, are still available. They’re basically deep fried dough, stuffed with sweetened coconut and peanuts. And at Buddha Bodai, they avoid using lard.
PATRICK: In old times, in ancient China, gold actually looks like that shape. It kind of looks like dumplings. When you fry it, it almost looks like you’re eating gold.
REPORTER: With food in hand – veggie fish and veggie roast pig – we head to Patrick’s sister Shirley’s home, in Brooklyn Heights. Patrick offers the Latino cabbie some of the Sau Gok, and is politely turned down. We arrive at Shirley’s building and walk into a community room on the 2nd floor, where Patrick and his family exchange New Year’s greetings: Gung Hai Fau Choi.
FAMILY: Gung Hai Fau Choi!
PATRICK: Gung Hai Fau Choi!
SHIRLEY: So this morning, we got up really early, and we went to the temple, and we gave our blessings and incense and we had a little bit of vegetarian food, and then we walked around Chinatown.
REPORTER: Shirley lives in the building with her husband, Kwong. She and Patrick and their sisters grew up in Chinatown, where their parents still live, but it was never possible to squeeze the whole family together in there. Here, they have space for family and friends.
REPORTER: In the middle of the room sits a large coffee table. There are at least twenty-five different dishes of food laid out, most of them in aluminum takeout dishes.
Some are New Year’s classics. These include turnip cake, or lo bak gao, which Patrick’s grandmother has made. It’s auspicious because the word ‘gao’ sounds like the Chinese word for tall or high. So it’s ideal for anyone hoping to actually grow or move up in the world.
There’s also Longevity Noodles.
CONNIE AU: (translation): …every year you have a whole fish, it’s good for family and (small laugh) more money.
REPORTER: Patrick’s mother Connie remembers how expensive it was to celebrate the New Year, growing up in Hong Kong. Families would spend hundreds of dollars on the red envelopes alone. Often, parents would take on additional jobs to finance their celebration.
CONNIE AU: …And you have to get a haircut before the lunar year and get new shoes and new clothes.
REPORTER: In the corner of the room sits Patrick’s grandmother. She’s in the middle of a marathon session of MJ, or mah-jongg. I’m warned against trying to interrupt her flow.
The mah-jongg goes on for hours. There’s only one thing that can interrupt mah-jongg in this family, and that’s the family custom that Patrick dreads the most.
PATRICK: Oh god, this is horrible.
REPORTER: It’s Chinese Ballroom dancing.
SHIRLEY: Okay, everybody, now we’re going to have a demonstration…
PATRICK: Ballroom dancing is really big in Chinese culture. I have no idea why.
REPORTER: Patrick’s aunt and her dancing partner, a man of about 60, wearing a baseball cap, slowly move around on the carpet– far from expert dancers, but holding the attention of every one in the room.
REPORTER: Not exactly traditional, but as good a way as any to usher in 4704 of the Chinese Calendar, the Year of the Dog.
For WNYC, I’m Arun Venugopal.
The Chinese New Year continues tomorrow with the big Chinatown parade. The parade will include hundreds of canine marchers, dressed in Chinese-style dogwear.