Lunar New Year celebrations will be largely virtual events this year. That’s more bad news for Chinatown USA

Lunar New Year celebrations will be largely virtual events this year. That’s more bad news for Chinatown USA

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The annual event is traditionally celebrated with meetings in banquet halls and the distribution of gifts. Fireworks shows, dragon dances and parades draw large crowds to Chinese communities – typically generating about 30% of annual revenue from restaurants and stores that are now struggling to stay on the market because of the pandemic, according to several leaders Chinese business.

Due to Covid-19’s concerns and government restrictions, many Lunar New Year celebrations will be virtual this year.

“It won’t be the same or anything close to it,” said Malcolm Yeung, executive director of the San Francisco Chinatown Community Development Center.

“Virtually every New Year’s celebration that we would have would have been canceled and replaced with some online programs,” said Yeung. “It is a community trying to do what we can to maintain our traditions and culture, but knowing that it will not compare to what we would do in a normal year or even what we would do in 2020.”

Susan Allen, CEO and president of the Foundation of the Pan-Asian Board of Education in the United States, says she expects most Chinese revelers to connect online with family and friends at home and abroad.

“They will be doing virtual events or FaceTime,” Allen told CNN Business. “They’ll probably put a big TV screen in a room and talk and eat, play loud music, perhaps, for older family members who still want traditional music and noise.”

Chi Vy Ngo, a restaurant owner in Chinatown, New York, is in a foyer outside his "Bo Ky" Chinese and Vietnamese noodles store on Bayard Street in Manhattan on January 11, 2021.
In New York City, the owner of Bo Ky, Chi Vy Ngo, who goes by the name “Angle”, does not expect much business in what would normally be the most profitable time of year for him and most business owners. of Chinatown.

In a normal year, Ngo would have spent the week preparing for an excess of tourists to flood his popular Vietnamese noodle shop, which his father opened in 1986. But this year, he spent more time selling groceries to local residents than noodles to. newcomers.

He, like many Chinatown restaurant owners, was forced to transform his business model to serve as almost a grocery store to avoid closure.

“We hope to have somewhere between 60-80 pounds of pork chops tomorrow for people to buy, take home and cook for themselves,” Ngo told CNN Business. “At the moment, we only execute 30% of the menu.”

Ngo and his family are also going virtual for the Chinese New Year this year. Earlier this week, he spent time chatting online with his aunt in Melbourne, Australia.

“Because of the pandemic, we are unable to visit it,” he said. “We met over the phone, WeChat, Facebook, but we can communicate”.

But Yeung, the San Francisco business leader, says that Chinatown communities are getting the best out of a bad situation. 2021 is the year of the ox in the Chinese zodiac. San Francisco authorities and local sponsors have partnered to create and create 12-year-old ox statues around the city.

“It was very well received and I think it lifted everyone’s spirits,” said Yeung.

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