This year, the Chinese New Year 2023, will fall on Sunday, January 22nd, 2023 and end on February 5th, 2023. The Chinese New Year is celebrated for 16 days. Wait, can I still say Chinese New Year, or should I say Lunar New Year, Spring Festival, or something else? With the intention of being inclusive, what should this Holiday be called? Many Chinese social media users in China saw red when bubble tea brand Chagee used the term "Lunar New Year". Read more at straitstimes.com. State-run news agency Xinhua, for instance, hailed the celebration of “Chinese Lunar New Year” in Myanmar, Malaysia and Japan, emphasizing the use of “Chinese red” in decorations. The Chinese bubble tea brand removed an Instagram post in English with “Lunar New Year” and replaced it with, “Wishing Tea-lovers Around the World Happy Chinese New Year!”, after Chinese netizens accused it of de-Sinicising the Spring Festival to ingratiate itself with overseas consumers. It is that time of the year again. While Chinese New Year is a wonderful celebration of culture, family, and heritage, it has also become an increasingly tedious political football to the point of annoyance. That is because some people are intent on redefining it to push the idea that Chinese New Year is not in fact, "Chinese" at all, and thus push the revisionist title: "Lunar New Year." The Chinese in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and the ethnic Chinese outside China are celebrating the Lunar New Year this week. Different countries, however, use different names for the festival, this reflecting the complexities underlying the position of ethnic Chinese across the region amid an ascendant China. The political correctness, or incorrectness, of saying ‘Happy Lunar New Year’ World Think you are being culturally sensitive when you wish people “Happy Lunar New Year” instead of “Happy Chinese New Year”? Saying ‘Lunar New Year’ may be more inclusive to other parts of Asia that celebrate the occasion, but is unnecessary when the context and the people addressed are clearly Chinese. In contexts outside of China, referring to Lunar New Year as "Chinese New Year" and vice versa can come off as insensitive and offensive because it ignores other cultures, all of which have their own unique traditions, beliefs, and celebrations. 2. How each Asian country celebrates and names their New Year festival is different. But the bigger issue is that almost every year, the Chinese New Year coincides with the Korean New Year (Seollal), the Vietnamese New Year (Tết) and the Tibetan New Year (Losar). Not to mention that some form of ‘Chinese’ New Year is celebrated in lots of other countries around the world by the Chinese diaspora (an estimated 50 million Fireworks are set off everywhere during New Years as well. We also have a bunch of other customs and traditions that are not similar to the Chinese ones. In China, it's not called "Chinese New Year" either, so even if all the customs are Chinese like they are in China, people don't have to say Chinese New Year. As language evolves, we sometimes forget the offensive origins of certain words and phrases. Or we never knew them in the first place. Many common terms and phrases are actually rooted in racist In Ho Yong's Beginner's Chinese, there's a comment early on clarifying that "中文" is preferred over "汉语" since "hanyu" means "the language of the Han people/race", while zhongwen is the "the language of China". So, since there are racial minorities in China, it's not very inclusive to say "汉语" and can be "politically incorrect". In recent years, large brands have started to capitalize on the aesthetic appeal of the cultural celebration by repackaging products or marketing collections as Chinese New Year themed. Initially, this seems harmless. There’s nothing inherently wrong with Fendi’s Lunar New Year themed collection or Disney’s Year of the Ox merchandise. It
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