Smart Ways to Celebrate Chinese New Year in NYC
By Troy Segal
Happy New Year! No, we’re not a month off. February 19 marks the start of the traditional Chinese Lunar New Year, which in 2015 is the Year of the Ram (or Sheep or Goat, depending who’s doing your translation). Following are some ways smart ways to celebrate Chinese New Year in NYC. The festivities customarily run for 15 days, so we’ve included events that extend the party into March.
Journalist Michael Meyer spent three years in a Manchurian rice-farming village called Wasteland, his wife’s family hometown. He’s written a memoir about the experience, and discusses it—and the overall evolution of rural China—first with New Yorker staffer Ian Frazier at the New York Public Library – Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Feb. 17, then with Bard College professor Ian Buruma at the Asia Society and Museum, Feb. 18.
To placate his traditional Taiwanese parents, a man living the gay life in NYC agrees to an arranged marriage with a nice Chinese girl, only to find he may actually have to go through with it when the folks arrive without warning. Remarks by several Asian filmophiles precede the screening of 1993’s The Wedding Banquet, directed by Ang Lee, New-York Historical Society, Feb. 20.
Image: Madhu nair — Flickr
Chinese households seize the advent of the New Year—also known as the Spring Festival—to do a lot of spring cleaning and redecorating. See how they embark on Preparing for the New Year in Chinatown on this Museum of Chinese in America-sponsored walking tour, Feb. 21 & 22.
There’s nothing like a gala concert (including pre-show cocktails and post-show dinner) with the New York Philharmonic to ring in a new year, especially when the program includes the talents of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, along with musicians playing traditional Chinese instruments like the sheng and the ghijak, and celebrated conductor Long Yu wielding the baton. Avery Fisher Hall, Feb. 24.
Learn all about the Chinese system of naming the years after animals, and their depiction in art, at a lecture by a Princeton University Chinese art historian; a reception featuring New Year nibbles (think dumplings and rice cakes) follows. China Institute, Feb. 27.
Parties and multi-generational gatherings are a key part of the celebrations this time of year. The Museum of Chinese in America hosts a day-long New Year family festival, complete with lion dance performances, arts and crafts demos and, of course, food. Uptown, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is also throwing a familial-oriented fete—celebrating both the New Year and the 100th birthday of its Department of Asian Art—with kite- and book-making workshops, tea ceremonies and puppet shows. Both, Feb. 28.
Hunan-born choreographer Shen Wei was trained in classic Chinese opera before becoming exposed to Western art forms. As a result, the modern dance performed by the Shen Wei Dance Arts troupe is “Neither East Nor West”—the name of the lecture-presentation he and his namesake company are performing at the New-York Historical Society, Mar. 3.
Just as the New Year celebrations wind down, Asia Week New York gears up—a weeklong celebration of art, both ancient and modern, from all over Asia (Mar. 13-21). The week features lectures and symposia at auction houses and Asian cultural institutions, art exhibits at museums and galleries (including an open-house viewing of the China Institute Gallery’s Mao’s Golden Mangoes and the Cultural Revolution on Mar. 17), and special shows mounted by out-of-town gallerists and experts, such as Zurich art dealer Robert Bigler’s exhibit of 13th- and 14th century Buddhist sculpture at Dickinson Roundell, opening Mar. 13.