Spokane Chinese Association brings Lunar New Year celebration to the Fox

There are a few “F”s that define a Lunar New Year celebration.

First, there’s family. According to Weiling Zhu, president of the Spokane Chinese Association, no matter how big or small your family, you celebrate the new year together.

Then, there are festivities, like firecrackers and fairs featuring art and various music and dance performances.

Perhaps the most important “F” of a Lunar New Year celebration is food. Over the course of the 16-day celebration, people gather with friends and family, sharing meals and treats.

Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations begin Tuesday. Zhu knows it’s a luxury to travel to China to experience a Lunar New Year celebration, so she and the rest of the Spokane Chinese Association see bringing the celebration to the Inland Northwest as part of their mission.

“You wouldn’t believe, actually 200 volunteers, we prepared this whole year for this event,” she said. “I do want people to come in, share and experience the one-of-a-kind.”

The Spokane Chinese Association will hold a Lunar New Year celebration on Sunday, the sixth day of Lunar New Year festivities, at the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox.

This is the fourth year the Spokane Chinese Association has hosted the celebration at the Fox. The venue, Zhu said, is the perfect size to hold the cultural fair and the performances.

“We put together authentic performances that reflect how people celebrate in China,” she said. “You’ve probably watched (videos of Lunar New Year celebrations on) YouTube and you can feel that kind of quality requires a good sound system. It requires a perfect stage, and it requires acoustic and it requires the visual, so all of that the Fox has well-equipped.”

The day kicks off with a free cultural fair from 1-3 p.m. The fair features a food court with authentic Asian food and treats, family-friendly games and New Year traditions, community booths and hands-on cultural activities and traditional crafts, including paper cutting, lantern-making and photo opportunities.

There will also be a chance for attendees to practice calligraphy, which Zhu said is one of the most popular activities at the cultural fair. Attendees can write their name or a blessing, like “good fortune” or “good health,” to take home with them.

“They see it as painting, so they would draw and then they would keep it and take it home,” Zhu said. “A lot of them say that they will frame it up at home. First of all, it’s a blessing word, and then secondly, they made it. They did it themselves. They wrote it.

“Thirdly, it is very colorful, cheerful. It’s usually red, and it’s different. A lot of times little kids even take it to school for show and tell.”

After a brief break, the celebration continues at 4 p.m. with performances, including lion and dragon dances, which symbolize good luck and help ward off evil spirits, traditional and contemporary music, classical and folk dance, martial arts, instrumental showcases and more. While the cultural fair is free, a ticket is required for the performances.

Students in kindergarten to 12th grade are free with an accompanying parent. All performance attendees will be entered into a drawing for the $1,000 Lunar New Year fortune prize.

“For a lot of people, it might be the first time they have seen it, so their eyes were all big,” Zhu said. “They see the lion and the dragon (costumes). We have them made in China. They’re very authentic, so they’re seeing our costumes, and they’re so different. Especially the kids. The kids love to take pictures with the dragon and with all the dancers … We encourage the children to come, because Spokane, it’s not as diverse as in New York, Seattle, so this is an opportunity to open their mind. It’s almost like a field trip for them.”

Along with this Lunar New Year celebration, members of the Spokane Chinese Association will bring the celebration to area schools and colleges, even traveling to Sandpoint to host New Year events. They were asked to visit the Tri-Cities but were not able to fit that into their already packed schedule.

Zhu, who has been in Spokane since 1992 when she and her husband began working toward their master’s in business administration at Gonzaga University, said Spokane is not like bigger cities with hundreds of thousands of Asian community members.

As such, the dedicated volunteers with the Spokane Chinese Association draw on all of their resources to organize events like this for the rest of the community.

It’s a lot of work, but seeing children excited by the lion and dragon dances, or seeing people enjoying the food and taking part in the cultural activities encourages the volunteers to keep going.

“To be honest, every time we finish the show, we said ‘We’re not going to do it again. For sure, this is the last year. We’re so tired.’ After a month, we start brainstorming again. ‘I wish we had done this,’ so the whole cycle starts again.”