Toronto’s Chinatown Business Improvement Association is planning several events this weekend to help mark Lunar New Year, including lion dances and food presentations.
“The objective,” said project coordinator Shulin Feng “is helping the Chinese community to experience the festivities in a safe way. One of them is that we’re trying to host a lot of our activities online or outdoors.”
Feng says events to mark the Year of the Tiber are meant to help bring the community together.
“Our first New moon exhibition actually started before the pandemic,” said Feng “and at the time it was all in-person workshops and it all received really positive feedback from the community, so we decided to keep doing it.”
This is Fengs’ first year coordinating these events and the pandemic makes the planning and execution of the festivities a little more difficult.
“The hardest part for me this year,” said Feng “is actually navigating the constantly changing pandemic restrictions. We actually had to start planning these events back in November and back then everything was open, Indoor dining was open. We were actually looking at the possibility of having in-person and indoor celebrations.”
The Chinatown BIA also produces videos that try to help local businesses during this time and Cheng says that one of the other difficulties is the complications in choosing what to represent, as the Lunar New Year is not solely a Chinese holiday.
“We have different demographics in the Chinese community,” said Feng “and Lunar new year is not just celebrated by the Chinese; it’s celebrated by Koreans and Vietnamese, and all these people have their different traditions and different foods and there are some similarities of course, but having to choose what showcase and not make it become like a long lecture of ‘How do east Asians celebrate Lunar New Year?'”
For more information visit the BIA website.