VANCOUVER—Stores are filled with red and gold decorations, rat shaped key chains representing the year of the rat in the Chinese zodiac are for sale, promotions featuring traditionally lucky numbers and company branded lucky red envelopes are everywhere — it’s clearly time to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

But these celebrations in Canada weren’t always this obvious.

Kevin Huang moved to the Vancouver area from Taipei when he was seven. Growing up in the North Shore area of the city, he recalled the lack of newspaper coverage and advertisements surrounding the Lunar New Year.

Now, he is the executive director of the Hua Foundation, which seeks to bridge cultural gaps between Chinese communities and other groups in Vancouver.

In recent years, many companies have embraced the holiday in a big way, selling Lunar New Year versions of their products and offering red and gold packaging in an attempt to woo customers who celebrate this time of year. But some say this has resulted in the holiday becoming extremely commercial, with many companies relying on easy stereotypes that oversimplify the reason for the celebration.

Sephora is one retailer that has embraced the Lunar New Year, offering a chance to win $888 for any customer who spends $88. This is in reference to the number eight, which is considered very lucky in some Asian cultures.

Some other examples include the restaurant Café Crepe selling something called “Hong Kong fog” and “golden panda” crepes, and Universal Studios in California, which is celebrating the occasion with special appearances from characters in the film “Kung Fu Panada” and a special menu of oogway eggrolls and beef pho.

Holidays are opportune moments for cross-cultural exchange, said Huang. It’s a time when people can learn about other cultures through food, stories and customs.

Like red envelopes (called hongbao in Mandarin and lai see in Cantonese), which usually contain money — or sometimes candy — and are given as gifts during special occasions like the new year or weddings.

Every Lunar New Year, Chinese people all over the world engage in a time honored tradition where money is gifted in little red envelopes known as 红包. While this tradition is practiced with many variations, generally family elders gift these red pockets to the young, who return the favor once they are grown and married. Thus the cycle of good fortune is received and returned in kind.

Huang said Nike’s Lunar New Year ad campaign, which plays on the age-old tradition of younger people politely refusing a red envelope from elders multiple times until they eventually accept, did a good job of respecting the culture behind the holiday.

“It spoke to a cultural expectation and element that wasn’t stereotypical. It was clever.”

Huang highlighted another example from years past that he found impressive: In 2018 TransLink, Metro Vancouver’s transportation authority, handed out red envelopes embossed with Chinese characters reading “safe travels.” Inside was a copy of the region’s transit map.

“It’s serving the public. I personally thought that was brilliant.”

But most organizations are not quite hitting the right note when it comes to celebrating the Lunar New Year, said Will Tao, an immigration lawyer and community advocate.

“It’s easy to just draw up the stereotypes — put up some rats, put up some eights and some nines, and they think Asian people will be happy,” he said.

“It’s this idea of oversimplifying Chinese and Asian cultures. They think very simple messaging is all that works with our very simple minds.”

According to Tao, the origins of Lunar New Year lie in celebrating family ties and wishing good health to loved ones.

Some new year festivities and traditions started as superstitions, like sweeping the house in the days leading up to the new year to make room for good luck and lighting fireworks to ward off evil spirits. For many poor families, eating meat and buying a set of new clothes were special occasions reserved for the new year.

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“It’s kind of ironic that it has been morphed into a holiday that now, is arguably about one of the greatest threats we face, which is over consumption and consumerism,” said Tao.

Huang agreed that most Western companies have a lot of work to do. Even something as simple as using the term Lunar New Year instead of Chinese New Year shows a deeper level of cultural understanding, since many other cultures besides the Chinese celebrate Lunar New Year, he explained.

He said companies would also do well to use both simplified and traditional Chinese characters in their Lunar New Year marketing material.

People from Hong Kong and Taiwan generally use traditional characters, whereas people from Mainland China generally use simplified Chinese. These are seemingly small differences that mean a lot to diaspora communities, Huang said.

“I do hope that organizations, especially ones operating in very diverse places in Canada and Vancouver, we do our due diligence,” said Huang.

“If we’re talking about our branding and marketing to certain communities, we should do it in a way that’s not tokenistic and in a way that is genuine.”

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