Chinese New Year coincides with the long, balmy sunny days when New Zealanders are leisurely, cheery, and ready to spend time outdoors. Even more importantly, there are the public holidays. The anniversary weekends of Auckland and Wellington fall within the same period. Already we have numerous wine and food festivals launched around those weekends. Then there is Waitangi Day on February 6.
Valentine's Day is on February 14 - though not a holiday, it has enough influence to put romance in the air, drive up the price of red roses, and fill many restaurants. The Chinese New Year has become another festival that adds a jovial and exotic cultural element to an already cheerful Auckland.
Politicians have found Chinese New Year celebrations, with all the lion dances, dragon parades, and tasty food stalls a soft entry point to restart their year of work. Parliament is usually not yet sitting but soon to start. The numerous celebrations and market day openings which fill every weekend from mid-January to early February offer good chances for the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, plus their senior ministers (including the Ministers of Ethnic Affairs and Immigration) to address sizeable crowds and to launch their New Year policies. What must be rather consoling is that the Chinese audiences are usually rather easy-going and uncritical.
Chinese New Year is the time when the community would be in its most courteous and hospitable mood. What a stark contrast for our politicians who need to steel themselves to face the Waitangi protests every year. In early 2000, Helen Clark chose to attend a Chinese New Year function instead of going to Te Tii marae where she had a particularly rough encounter with some militant activists in the previous year. Thereafter, all PMs have attended CNY functions, where Chinese community leaders are invariably courteous and very hospitable, a far cry from what has become known as Waitangi's tensions and controversies' when politicians are jostled, verbally abused, and even pelted with mud.
For the news media, Chinese New Year also offers a highly welcome chance for some human interest news stories to emerge, during a period when there is a drought of hard news.
Since 2000, the Lantern Festival has become even better known than the New Year Day itself. Many New Zealanders regard them as one and the same. Traditionally, the Lantern Festival marks the end of Chinese New Year celebrations, a kind of grand finale. It takes place when we have the first full moon of the lunar calendar, that is the 15th day of the first month. The lanterns are displayed to "echo" the brilliance of the first full moon.
In Auckland, the Lantern Festival has become a celebration of three consecutive nights, a joyous event of performances, food stalls, and lantern displays attended by Chinese and non-Chinese New Zealanders alike. It has become an iconic Auckland cultural event, not just a cultural celebration among the Chinese.
How the Chinese New Year celebrations have taken root in New Zealand is a fortuitous story that reflects the country's changing demographics and the country's generally open-minded and easy-going tolerance for change. This year is the Year of the Horse, according to the Chinese zodiac. We last had the Year of the Horse in 2002 and I have memories of going to Parliament with Chinese community leaders from around the country, listening to Prime Minister Helen Clark delivering the poll-tax apology to New Zealand Chinese. To me, that marked New Zealand's genuine acceptance of the Chinese as a rightful group in the country, and it also marked the nation's maturity to face up to its historical baggage of discriminating against the Chinese.
New Zealand led the world in offering that apology (Canada followed suit in 2006). Let's welcome the Year of the Horse once more this time, in 2014.
• Professor Manying Ip of the School of Asian Studies at Auckland University is an executive trustee of the Asia NZ Foundation.
