One of the celebrations specific to Binghamton is Parade Day. This annual precursor to St. Patrick’s Day comes shortly after the Lunar New Year.
Commonly called “Chinese New Year” despite being celebrated by people all across Asia and the Asian diasporas, the Lunar New Year is a 15-day opportunity to spend time with family and friends, eat, set off fireworks and party.
Aside from the economic ramifications of having workers leave factories for a week in order to celebrate, it’s impossible not to have a good time. Even if you’re about as Asian as a pint of Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day, you can still enjoy Lunar New Year celebrations.
It’s no secret that Western culture has been bleeding into Asia. With the amount of traffic between the two, it’d be surprising not to find KFC and McDonald’s sharing street space with more traditional restaurants, or to hear the latest synthesized Western pop star blaring from radios in shops and taxis. Going to be in Taiwan when a highly anticipated Hollywood movie comes out? No problem — you won’t have to look far before finding a theater playing it in English with subtitles.
Holidays like Christmas and Valentine’s Day have made their way into the consciousness of a younger generation. In South Korea, 31.6 percent of the population identifies as Christian, an arguably Westernized religion. Enormous billboards in Hong Kong advertise expensive Swiss watches to their nouveau riche Chinese audience. The logos of famous French and Italian fashion designers like Louis Vuitton and Gucci decorate the exteriors of high-end department stores.
At the same time, the cultural sharing is also moving the other way. This movement isn’t confined to eateries of Panda III’s caliber, coffee shop screenwriters who claim to adhere to the principles of Buddhism, Daoism or a niche Asian religion you probably haven’t heard of, or that guy who has watched every episode of “Bleach,” throws “kawaii” into every other sentence and dreams of shy schoolgirls.
The recent popularity of “Gangnam Style” and Korean TV dramas (make a date with Hulu and try not to get sucked into the sobbing, screaming and delicious intrigue) can be taken as proof of the marketability of Asian cultural goods in the American marketplace. Why should this be surprising? In 2009, 2,600,150 people reported that they spoke a form of Chinese at home, making it the third largest language in the United States after English and Spanish or Spanish Creole. With 4.43 percent of the population identifying as “Asian,” it is one of the U.S.’s most prominent minorities.
Compare that with how many people in the United States are actually Irish and not “Irish/English/German/Italian, but my family’s been here for eight generations.” Even with the typical American multinational identity, we make time for the revelries of St. Patrick’s Day. For one day, everyone — even the people who can trace their lineage back to 1700 without any instance of an ancestor even setting foot in Ireland — is Irish.
To expect everyone to pretend to be Asian for one day is unreasonable and probably unintentionally insulting on some level. Still, that doesn’t mean we can’t take the opportunity to wish our friends and family well, engage in some adventurous eating, watch a lion dance or marvel at the Lantern Festival that marks the end of the celebratory period. You don’t even have to go to Asia to get a taste of the fun. Part of the beauty of America is that you can at least get an idea of what something’s like if you look in the right places.
You can enjoy the different Asian cultures without turning the experience into “Eat, Pray, Love” either. At the bottom of it all, we’re all people trying to get through each day and looking forward to whatever little happiness dangles before us.
The Year of the Horse begins on January 31, 2014. If you have the opportunity, if you think of it, call your parents and wish them a happy Chinese New Year. They might be a little confused, but hey, only as much as you would be if you actually thought about how many people will be wearing “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” shirts next week.