Lunar New Year: Sydney renames Chinese New Year festival
Sydney has renamed the event, ending years of controversy surrounding the Asian community’s most significant celebration.
Sydney has officially rebranded its annual celebration of Chinese New Year to the Lunar New Year Festival, ending years of controversy surrounding the name of the most significant cultural event celebrated by Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and other Asian communities in Australia.
According to a City of Sydney spokesperson, the latest move intends to further “expand” the Chinese New Year celebrations, which has grown from a community-led event 22 years ago to the largest celebration of such kind in the world outside Asia.
“The Sydney Lunar Festival embraces all communities and cultures, whether or not they use the lunar calendar, and creates new opportunities for the event’s further development,” the spokesperson told The Australian.
On Monday, Lord Mayor Clover Moore announced a line-up of “exciting events for everyone” at the launch of the city’s biggest ever Lunar New Year celebrations, which is expected to attract upwards of 1.3 million visitors from February 1-10.
The naming change came after Ryde and Georges River Councils (which cover areas such as Hurstville and Kogarah) adopted a more neutral Lunar New Year, following public calls from non-Chinese communities.
Sydney man Anthony Ngo attracted nearly 2000 signatures in his 2015 online petition to call the City of Sydney to stop calling the event “Chinese New Year”, arguing it is not right to “choose to promote the more dominant one and assume that they are all the same”. In the latest update to the petition page, he welcomed the decision and said he looked forward to celebrating this event “in a uniting manner”.
Sydney blogger Thang Ngo welcomed the change, saying it is “a good thing to be inclusive.” Mr Ngo sent an open letter to Ms Moore in 2013 calling for the event to be renamed and was subsequently told “the festival’s name is historic, reflecting its origins in the Chinese community”.
The council said that the decision came after consulting with “many leaders from across the communities”, providing a list including the Cultural Consul at the Chinese Consulate-General in Sydney and China Cultural Centre.
The China Cultural Centre declined to comment when contacted by The Australian.
Daphne Lowe Kelley from the Chinese Australian Historical Society said that while she knew a number of people in the Chinese community were not happy about the name changing, she took a positive stance.
“We should take a broader view. For those people who don’t know what a Lunar year or festival is, hopefully they would also learn ‘Oh OK, that’s because people like Chinese and other societies always used the Lunar calendar’, not the Gregorian calendar, which is the one we use today,” Ms Kelley told The Australian.
“If you get people from broader Australian community taking part, coming to event and learning a bit more Asian culture, I can say it’s a positive thing as well,” she said.
The rebranded festival will include the popular Lunar Lanterns exhibition, performances by a cross-section of Sydney’s Asian communities, Chinatown celebrations, dragon boat races, food offerings, lion dancing, and even a Guinness World Record attempt for the most people eating dumplings in the one location at the one time.
This is also the fourth years since the axing of its signature Chinese New Year parade due to light rail construction. In the past, the Chinese government sent over several hundred performers from a featured province each year to participate in the parade.
According to the City of Sydney spokesperson, the festival organisers will revisit the possibility of a future parade once construction of the light rail is complete and after consultation with Transport for NSW.
The debate of naming seems settled for now as Australia is ushering into the Year of the Pig, which starts from February 5, 2019 on the Western Calendar. It might still raise issues in several years as 2023 will be the Year of the Rabbit for the Chinese, and the Year for the Cat for the Vietnamese.
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