My Difficulty With Chinese New Year as a Chinese-New Zealander

Maybe it’s just my internalised racism rearing its ugly, undying head, but I never seem to know when Chinese New Year is—or Lunar New Year, as it should be known. It sneaks up on me every year. Something about the surprise makes me realise I’m still figuring out my relationship with it. And my relationship to being Chinese.

After arriving in Aotearoa at the ripe age of four, I went through a transition where I heavily rejected my Chineseness. The 90s wave of immigration hadn’t fully hit and I was still one of relatively few Asian kids in my year. I remember cringing whenever someone even said the word “China” and it took me years to get over that—or maybe even still.

Somehow young me had already subconsciously internalised an understanding of racial hierarchies in society, something I wouldn’t consciously understand until university. Years of harbouring ingrained hostile beliefs toward my own culture means I now hold an ambivalent relationship to various Chinese ‘traditions’ and festivals.

I feel complicated about Chinese New Year because I’m wary of token gestures of acceptance, without any of the actual work it takes us to get there.

It’s strange to have this festival celebrated in the mainstream. I remember seeing photos of friends celebrating Lunar New Year come up in my newsfeed last year and my first reaction was, oh wait–is this cool now? I guess in my mind Asianness has never occupied a space of celebration—at best, it was a space of ridicule; at worst, outright hatred. Now, we’re hypervisible in the news and on the streets—but not just because we are “buying all the houses” or “sucking up all the healthcare”.

I think my relationship to this festival is a wariness that celebrations can be all the surface with none of the substance. We are still forced to celebrate culture in silos. Matariki, Chinese New Year, and Diwali are relegated to their particular days of the year, with no room for true cross–cultural collaboration. We are happy to pull out the features of Chineseness that are comfortable and non-threatening, aspects that serve the mainstream. But when it comes down to it, we’re far less comfortable dismantling the system that continues to oppress our voices, our agency. Systems that propagate anti-Asian sentiment and make it genuinely harmful to navigate the comment sections of certain articles.

We’re even more uncomfortable upholding whakawhanaungatanga between ethnic groups in Aotearoa, unifying and bolstering each other. The way things are now, the dominant Pākehā group gives each of us an inch, without ever letting go of the full stick.

Tween me would have rejected CNY celebrations outright and refused to associate with them. Slightly more ‘woke’ me wants to embrace it, wants to finally unpack the self-imposed baggage and burden I’ve internalised. But I genuinely don’t know how to.

CNY marks the largest annual mass human migration in the world where over 130 million migrant workers within China go back home for the new year. A teacher told me young people feel a lot of pressure and obligation to go home because, “If you don’t go home, what does that say about you?”

What does it say about me, that I don’t naturally yearn to celebrate this festival? Is this is just a result of my upbringing? Current public celebrations of the Lunar New Year in Aotearoa feel tokenistic. Living in a Western country means that the celebration of this occasion becomes an unsettling mix between an actual celebration of tradition, and an over-commercialised holiday like Christmas or Valentine’s Day.

It’s an opportunity for New Zealand to show our proud, exotic and faddish display of diversity. Meanwhile, shameless articles continue to dominate the headlines. Couple denied home because they weren’t Asian or Chinese’ stays on the front page. Restaurants in Christchurch laugh at our accents, while big corporates seek to profit off of Oriental otherness.

To many, this one day acknowledgement of our migrant Asian diaspora can feel cheap and alien. But does it always have to be this way? And does that mean it doesn’t carry any pride or weight?

The truth is, I see Chinese friends posting about their family traditions and I can’t recall any of my own and I haven’t made the effort to find out. I don’t know my family’s specific history, can’t point on a map where my roots are, much less recite the various traditions for food, clothing, and superstitions for the Lunar New Year.

It’s like when former New Plymouth mayor Andrew Judd claimed to be a ‘recovering racist’. I almost feel like I’m in recovery for my rejection of Chineseness and even though I am consciously wanting to change there seems to be a wall I just can’t break through. One of my mother’s greatest desires is for me to speak to her in Mandarin. I haven’t since I was probably around 8—although once she accidentally caught me speaking it on Chinese radio. But every time I try to speak to her, something in me makes me hesitate, it’s shame, or something else… fear? Deep down I know I just need to try harder.

How are you supposed to embrace yourself when you’ve grown up being told that everything you are is alien and incorrect? How am I supposed to celebrate the Lunar New Year as a proud, Chinese woman when I’ve been told to be ashamed of this identity my whole life?

I see people post Happy New Year posts and am jealous of the ease with which they can partake. They know their family traditions, they know the right phrases to say. I’m hopeful maybe that one day I’ll get there too, without the shame and trepidation.

As I beat myself up about the shame in this article, I get a text from my mother. It’s in Chinese—of course—so I put it into Google Translate.

“Julie, Today is New Year’s Eve in China. Do you want to eat together? We have done the meal, if you want to come back, please tell us a few minutes, how are we waiting for you?”

I decide to skip my next Skype meeting and go visit her.

Julie Zhu is a theatre and film maker currently producing a show about rediscovering your roots with Proudly Asian Theatre, called Roots by Oliver Chong. She says she needs to take some of her own medicine.