'Celebrating Lunar New Year, not Chinese New Year', Benedict Rogers

It's an important distinction many pro-democracy activists from Hong Kong are rightly keen to point out

This week hundreds of millions of people across Asia and throughout the world will celebrate the Lunar New Year, and usher in the Year of the Snake.

We should wish them a happy celebration with families, friends and communities.

But as we welcome the Year of the Snake, let us remember and reflect on three important considerations.

First, the characteristics of the snake.

According to the Zodiac, each Lunar New Year is marked by a new animal symbol, and each one represents particular characteristics.

Many experts say those born in the Year of the Snake are intelligent, strategic, creative, and charming, as well as resourceful, perceptive, and intuitive.

But they can also be secretive, cunning and ruthless.

The year is predicted to bring wisdom, adaptability, and a sense of transformation.

As we face a variety of challenges and conflicts across Asia and the world, we will need all of these characteristics this year.

Second, let us remember that we are celebrating the Lunar New Year and not the Chinese New Year.

This is an important distinction that many of my pro-democracy friends from Hong Kong are rightly keen to point out.

Every year the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime in Beijing seeks to co-opt this festival, politicize it, and turn it into a propaganda campaign.

The CCP always tries to turn the Lunar New Year either into a test of loyalty to its own ideology or a weapon to fuel Chinese nationalism.

But plenty of communities beyond China celebrate this festival too, and we should ensure that our rhetoric is inclusive. This is their celebration, not Xi Jinping’s and his quislings.

Lunar New Year is celebrated, first of all, by plenty of ethnically Chinese people who have no truck with the CCP and no loyalty to the contemporary Chinese state — across China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, and beyond.

Furthermore, it is a festival shared by Koreans, Japanese, and Vietnamese, among others.

So let us not play into Beijing’s political and nationalistic agenda.

Moreover, the Lunar New Year is celebrated by Tibetans — with their festival of Losar — almost a month later, from Feb. 10-12, similar to the way the Orthodox Christians mark Christmas several weeks later than other Christians.

In many of our diverse traditions, we operate according to divergent calendars. In that diversity, let us celebrate Lunar New Year for all communities, across the region and the world.

And third, while Lunar New Year is a time for families and friends to come together, to share food, exchange gifts — usually the red envelope with money in it, known in Mandarin as hóngbāo or in Cantonese as a lai see — and enjoy traditional customs, much as Christmas is for many in the West and for Christians across the world. And let us remember those who are separated from their loved ones due to repression, persecution and conflict.

As families and friends enjoy traditional meals together, let us remember those in prison for their political or religious beliefs, who are unable to celebrate with their loved ones.

We think of Hong Kong’s most prominent political prisoner Jimmy Lai, a 77-year-old British citizen who has already been in jail for over four years, whose trial continues, and who may well die in prison.

We think of Hong Kong barrister Chow Hang-tung, student leader Joshua Wong, legal scholar Benny Tai, and all of Hong Kong’s thousand or more political prisoners.

We remember too the prisoners of conscience across China.

People like the lawyer and citizen journalist Zhang Zhan were jailed for reporting on Covid-19 in Wuhan and then, not long after her release, detained again.

Or Pastor Wang Yi, the founder of Chengdu’s Early Rain Covenant Church.

Or the many dissidents, bloggers, human rights defenders, lawyers, Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, and whistleblowers in China’s jails today.

And we remember those in the region’s gulags and refugee camps.

The Uyghurs in prison camps in Xinjiang, those in concentration camps in North Korea, and those in refugee and internally displaced people camps along the borders of Myanmar.

We also think of the families of those in prison — sitting around the table trying to enjoy the customary dishes of the season, but with an empty chair representing a father, husband, mother, wife, son, or daughter, who should be there but who is instead jailed, missing, displaced, exiled or dead.

We turn too to the democracies in the region where this festival is celebrated and yet where freedom is increasingly under threat.

We think of Taiwan and the challenges it faces from Beijing.

And South Korea, whose example of democracy has been tarnished in recent months.

We pray they will emerge in the Year of the Snake strengthened, renewed, and equipped to see off the threats to their hard-won freedoms.

And we think of the diaspora communities, spread throughout the world, who are no longer on their home turf.

We pray they will be able to celebrate this festival with each other, but also share the wisdom and joy of their customs with their new-found wider communities.

In particular, we think of the hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers who have settled in the past five years in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, the United States, Europe, and beyond.

To them, I say a hearty: Gong Hei Fat Choy!

All of the world’s significant cultural and religious festivals — whether Christmas and Easter, Eid, Hannukah, Diwali, or the Buddhist Water Festival across Southeast Asia — provide opportunities for us to reflect, cleanse, and renew.

But they also present poignant moments to remember those who are not with us, for painful reasons.

Whether it is through death, imprisonment, or separation due to displacement or exile, the grief and sense of bereavement are similar.

So as we celebrate, let us also remember those who should be with us but are not.

Throughout Asia and the world, these are dark times and there are many dark places.

But let the images of all our festivals — of light and love, of water and cleansing, of fasting and renewal — inspire us all to revive our communities, rebuild our societies, and liberate our people.

Let the lights of Christmas, Hannukah, and Lunar New Year, the cleansing of the Buddhist Water Festival, the fasting of Lent and Ramadan, and the renewal of Eid and Easter give us all new life.

The snake is one of my least favorite creatures, but let us embody its best virtues.

In our fight for freedom and justice, let us be more intelligent, creative, strategic and resourceful.

In our pursuit of human dignity and human rights, let us — this year, as we are sent out as sheep amongst wolves — invoke St Matthew’s call to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”

I wish all my friends celebrating this week a happy Lunar New Year.

This article was published in UCA News on 27 January 2025.