Lucy Gellman Photos.
Xi Liu lifted his phone and hit record, ready to ring in the Year of the Snake. At the door of Hong Kong Market, two lions pawed the ground, their eyes wide and bright as drum and cymbals sailed over the street. Above them, a string of red lanterns swayed gently, as if they were dancing along. A cheer went up from the crowd outside, and the lions entered the store to bless the year ahead.
Saturday, Liu joined hundreds of attendees at the 14th annual Lunarfest, a day-long celebration of the Lunar New Year held in the Whitney-Audubon Retail District of New Haven. A collaboration among the Yale-China Association, New Haven Museum, Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven Free Public Library, City of New Haven, AAPI New Haven, Office of International Students & Scholars (OISS) and others, it recognized the sheer breadth of a diaspora, centering New Haven’s diversity and Asian American community as a point of pride and citywide resilience.
“Lunar New Year is a chance for us to honor our past, our ancestors, and learn from them, to be around our loved ones in our present and appreciate gratitude, and celebrate the ones that we have, and also wish for luck and fortune for the New Year” said AAPI New Haven Co-Founder Christine Kim, taking a moment to recognize the vast and significant reach of Lunar New Year across Asia. “This year, more than many, we need a lot of luck and fortune. But more importantly, we need each other.”
Top: Christine Kim: "This year, more than many, we need a lot of luck and fortune. But more importantly, we need each other.” Bottom: Members of the Wan Chi Ming Hung Gar Institute, a longtime Lunarfest collaborator.
Celebrated across Asia, Lunar New Year is a two-week festival that this year runs from January 29 through February 12. As many of Saturday’s speakers pointed out, part of its beauty is its expansive footprint: what is known as the Spring or New Moon Festival or Chūnjié in China becomes Tết Nguyên Đán in Vietnam, which becomes Sǒllal in Korea. During those two weeks—and sometimes in the month of travel that surrounds them—families gather, eat, visit relatives, and commit to the year ahead, with everything from special foods to the red envelopes known as hongbao.
Even before wishes of “Xīn Nián Kuài Lè!” and “Gōng xǐ fā cái!” graced the street Saturday morning, a palpable sense of joy radiated down Whitney Avenue, as friends and families gathered for a Lion Dance Parade and formal kickoff to the day. On once-empty sidewalks, hundreds of people materialized, most pressed shoulder-to-shoulder in a rainbow of puffy winter coats, wool and down layers, and half a dozen shades of red.
At the curb, kids gathered the street eagerly, clutching the red-and-gold envelopes or hongbao thought to bring luck into the New Year. With cheers, many of them watched as two bright, larger-than-life lions from the Wan Chi Ming Hung Gar Institute emerged, with pink and yellow fringe that undulated across their bodies. Beneath their long, sumptuous coats, two pairs of legs in red silk trousers and calf-high yellow socks transformed into a set of animal limbs.
Top: Yvonne Chu and Huxley. Bottom: Delight was not reserved for young children.
Holding her two-year-old daughter Huxley in her arms, attendee Yvonne Chu called Saturday a chance to pass the tradition onto her two young girls, Huxley and Amelia. While she was born in Guangzhou, China, Chu spent most of her childhood in Western Massachusetts, often “the kid behind the counter” in a Chinese restaurant that her parents ran.
While “we did as much as we could” to celebrate the Lunar New Year, she knows firsthand what it’s like to experience cultural isolation so far away from home, she said. So this year, she and her family bundled up to make Lunarfest part of their tradition. After years of trying to attend, she was glad to have made it.
“I wanted to introduce my girls” to the celebration, she said, her eyes scanning the street. Everywhere, it seemed, there were signs of the city’s vibrant and growing Asian American community, from Hu Ping-Dolph's new hot pot restaurant to decorations by the windows of Steamed and Chef Jiang across the street to red lanterns and crepe paper that hung taut against a smear of blue sky.
Only later did speaker Quan Tue Tran remind people that Asian Americans have called New Haven home for centuries: the Elm City was home to Connecticut’s first recorded Chinese restaurant in 1897, according to archival copies of the New Haven Register. It marked a small but growing Chinese community in the city long before the Yale-China Association opened its offices on Whitney Avenue.
Top: Five-year-old Clara Wang with the lions. Bottom: Meilani and Luca Escobar, who are your and seven.
That history seemed to fade from past to present Saturday. Inside Hong Kong Market, Liu buzzed between the aisles, making sure the space was ready for the lions before they entered. Last year, he and his family took over after Meng Zhang, the longtime owner of the store, retired. His daughter, Emily Liu, said that the family was thrilled to be part of the city’s Lunar New Year celebrations.
“It’s pretty exciting to be here in New Haven celebrating in community,” she said in between helping out customers. At the register, a steady trickle of people never seemed to stop.
Back outside, it was time for the parade to begin. Standing around a large barrel drum, members of the Wan Chi Ming Hung Gar Institute began to play, ringing the street into being. Through the bitter cold, the sound traveled skyward, heartbeat-like as a strong, solitary voice joined in. If a person was close enough, they could feel the sound traveling up through their bones, making it hard not to move.
Anderson de Graaf, a student at Hamden Hall and an apprentice with the Eli Whitney Museum & Workshop (in orange coat). "It's cold obviously, but it's nice to see all the different people here, and all the different communities," he said. "It's nice to see all the people. Sometimes you see Asian people on the street, but now they're all here, concentrated, and you can see all of them here, celebrating their culture."
Down the street, attendees were ready. Gripping their hongbao tightly as they waited, siblings Luca and Meilani Escobar smiled with delight, ready to ring in the Year of the Snake in a new home state. Last year, the two moved with their parents from Beijing to Connecticut, where they live in Glastonbury. At home, the family observes Lunar New Year with a special meal, including dumplings for good luck.
“This is to let them take part in their culture,” said their dad, Oscar Escobar.
As the lions made their way down the street, several speakers brought that same optimistic spirit to their remarks, keeping comments relatively short between icy gusts of wind. John Frisbie, executive director of the Yale-China Association, explained that Saturday marked the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, a celebration of the Kitchen God or Zao Jun. Traditionally, families mark the date with food and wine, offering them up to Zao Jun to bless the home and ward off bad luck for the new year.
“Wishing everybody a happy and healthy and prosperous Year of the Snake,” he said before switching languages. “Xīnnián hǎo!”
Top: Members of Red Lantern, an undergraduate dance troupe at Yale. Bottom: Yale Club Wushu in action.
Others brought their remarks closer to home. Kim, who has become a vocal champion of everything from voter literacy to food justice, remembered feeling isolated as a kid, painfully aware that she was different. It was only years later that she realized how diversity strengthens a community.
“I was made to feel embarrassed or ashamed of who I was, of the food that I ate, and the way my family spoke,” she said. “But I am so glad to be here with all of you in New Haven. Because this is a community that welcomes everyone, and celebrates everyone’s culture … and is so much richer, more delicious and better for it. More than ever, we need to be with each other, learn from each other, share food with each other, and celebrate each other.”
Mayor Justin Elicker, who studied Mandarin while teaching English in Taiwan, called Lunar New Year a time of reflection that is both individual and communal. This year especially, he sees it as a celebration of New Haven, a diverse and multicultural sanctuary city “that welcomes everyone,” regardless of who they are, where they come from or what their documentation status may be.
When he opened in Mandarin, the cheers from the crowd were immediate and cacophonous.
Top: Mayor Justin Elicker. Bottom: Members of Master Jack's Wu Dang Kung Fu Academy.
“The Lunar New Year, it is about new surprises—there have already been too many new surprises this year—but it’s also about a new beginning,” he said. “Shedding your snakeskin and having a new beginning. So I hope you all walk into this New Year thinking about your new beginnings—what you can do to help your community to renew yourself, to renew your energy as we go into a very challenging time together. And the important word there is together.”
Celebrating that unity, Asian Pacific American Coalition of Connecticut (APAC) co-chairs Quan Tran and Jennifer Heikkila Diaz reminded attendees that Asian Americans have always had a home in Connecticut, where they are now one of the fastest growing populations. In recent years, Connecticut’s AAPI community has reached nearly six percent of the state’s population. This fall, public schools across the state will begin teaching Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) history as part of a state-funded mandate that was first passed in 2022.
“Our communities have been here and we have to claim that,” Tran said. “And I’m so happy to see all of you out there, New Haven is fantastic. Outside of New Haven, the AAPI communities are thriving, and we are making sure that all of our young people feel that they have a place wherever they want to be, and however they want to grow up.”
In a series of performances that followed, those words sprang to life over and over again, from soaring Wushu demonstrations to the delicate and synchronized moves of Yale’s Red Lantern dance troupe. But nowhere, perhaps, was it clearer than in the parade’s grand finale, as lion dancers scaled poles for the cai qing ceremony, which ends with plucking lettuce, tearing it into strips or shreds, and releasing it over the street like confetti.
As he took it all in, Wan Chi Ming Hung Gar Institute lifer Alvin Ho marvelled at a successful parade—his first in New Haven, but one of dozens he’s participated in during his lifetime. Born and raised in New York’s Chinatown, Ho is a second-generation member of the institute; his late father was a member before him, and his young children will follow as soon as they are old enough to join.
“I grew up in this culture,” he said. Ho’s parents, immigrants from Guangdong Province, made sure that they held onto their culture in a new country. “This is what we live for. This is our favorite time of the year. This is when we come out, we celebrate.”
“A lot of kids born here, they lose a little bit of the traditions and cultures, so I try to keep as much as I can,” he added, noting greetings like fai gou jeung dai (may you grow up healthy and strong) and sun tai gin hong (good health). “We try to keep the language and learn the language. We try to learn our culture, passed down from the generations before us.”
For more from Lunarfest, watch the video above or visit the Arts Council of Greater New Haven's Instagram.