![]() Most were unable to take time off from work for fear of losing their jobs, so they marked the occasion through food. One of the people behind the popular food blog and cookbook The Woks of Life, Leung found when she emigrated from China as a teenager that Chinese immigrants didn’t celebrate Lunar New Year in a big way. It’s a dramatic shift from Judy Leung’s early experiences in the US. Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/Getty Images Visitors give offerings to a lion for good luck during a 2022 Lunar New Year celebration in Westminster, California. Even outside of ethnic enclaves, there’s a greater awareness of Lunar New Year, signaled in part by its commercialization in the West – consumers can buy gift sets from Lego and Sephora and paper lanterns and garlands from Target. Some public schools have added the holiday to their calendars. In cities with large East and Southeast Asian populations, family celebrations at home are accompanied by Lunar New Year flower markets, parades, banquet dinners and firework displays. As waves of Asian immigrants have settled in the US and continue coming over in large numbers, the festival in many parts of the country is no longer the quiet occasion that Hayslip first encountered. Lunar New Year has become more of an eventĬome January 22, millions of Americans with roots in China, Vietnam, South Korea and other Asian countries will ring in the Lunar New Year. But while Tết is more widely celebrated these days, it’s important to her that the traditions at the heart of the holiday aren’t lost. It’s been decades since Hayslip first came to the US, and San Diego now has one of the largest Vietnamese communities in the country. The flowers, passionfruit, whatever I can get my hands on, I put at the altar.” ![]() “I harvest the oranges and I harvest the grapefruit that I have around here. “Every year in my home, even though I’m over 70, I still do the same thing,” the author and activist told CNN. Still, she made sure that Tết felt as true to her Buddhist traditions as possible. Finding someone who could raise and kill a whole chicken for the celebratory meal was another ordeal. There were few Vietnamese people in the area at the time, and procuring incense, sticky rice and other items for the altar was difficult. When Hayslip arrived in San Diego in 1970 with an American husband and two children in tow, Tết was virtually nonexistent. Le Ly Hayslip honors her ancestors as part of Tết at her home in San Diego.
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