It’s “Lunar New Year” now. Of course, there are many lunar calendars with differing starts of the year but let’s just pave over that to Frankenstein together some generic nonspecific holiday because Gyna bad.
It’s “Lunar New Year” now. Of course, there are many lunar calendars with differing starts of the year but let’s just pave over that to Frankenstein together some generic nonspecific holiday because Gyna bad.
It’s the Chinese calendar not the Han calendar. The Chinese calendar is the product of the Multiethnic Chinese state. Historically one of the important functions of the Chinese state is to compile the calendar. This has been the case even in dynasties **run by ethnic minorities. ** such as aforementioned Qing dynasty. It’s not my fault that English uses the same words to denote nationality and ethnicity. The fact that you just automatically assume anything called Chinese is automatically exclusive to Han Chinese is sus.
Countries that celebrate Chinese New Year do so because they were vassal states in the past (Korea, Vietnam, Japan Historically) or because they have a large Chinese diaspora (Singapore, Malaysia, which has both Hui and Han Chinese Diaspora). In the case of Vietnam, the Vietnamese state began doing their own calculations at some point, hence why I will acknowledge Tet as a seperate holiday. Vietnam is also an multiethnic state, and I doubt that only the Kinh majority celebrate Tet. Also, the first dynasty to introduce the Chinese calendar to Vietnam was the Mongol Yuan dynasty.
Occupied Korea doesn’t have their own calendar, they went from being Qing Vassals directly to using the Gregorian Calendar during the Gabo Reforms of 1896. If you look up the article on “Korean calendar” on wikipedia, it will state straight up that it’s the same as the Chinese calendar, which was last revised in the Qing dynasty. Only occupied Korea claims they celebrate a seperate holiday for nationalistic reasons. Ethnic Koreans in China would probably be offended if you told them that they’re actually celebrating a different New Years than everyone else. In fact I don’t think even the DPRK claims that there’s a pre-Gregorian “Korean Calendar” seperate from the Chinese Calendar.
Minority groups that do have their own calendars also celebrate Chinese New Year since it’s the Chinese New Year and not the Han new year. Mongolian and Tibetan New years usually (although not always) fall on seperate days. Ethnic Mongols in China also celebrate on a seperate day than people in Mongolia the country.
Japan’s never been a vassal but you can correct me if I’m wrong on that part.
You’re so used to seeing it through the eyes of a statist that you can’t even fathom that people celebrating their new year comes before some Chinese officials compiled the calendar. Is the event in question the calendar or the celebration? You’re purposefully misconstruing the argument as if it’s about the calendar, not the celebration that indigenous people do in Asia as you are so removed from the people that you cannot even see this point.
Through personal relations to ethnically Yanbian Korean Chinese people, I can tell you that it is false. You keep talking about some calendar system as if that is what marks holidays, and you’re so far as to gone to claim now that Koreans celebrate Chinese new year and that Vietnamese Tet has origins in different system of calendar measurement instead of people celebrating their new year the way they always did. Are you even listening to yourself? So by your standards, if Occupied Korea measures their own calendar, it’s suddenly a different holiday? You’re talking nonsense.
Yes. otherwise they’re all just some version of Chinese New Years. You have to draw the line somewhere. Christmas isn’t a different holiday because they celebrate it in a different way in the Phillipines vs. the US.
Some dude from the Bay Area you met one time isn’t a real argument. I’m literally from Northeastern China and my grandfather lived in an ethnic Korean village when he was younger. Nobody thinks ethnic Koreans are celebrating a seperate holiday because they don’t have a seperate calendar. Why the fuck would their ethnicity magically make it so that they’re celebrating a seperate holiday. Do you go up to black people and say “Happy African-American New Years!” on Jan 1st?
The Chinese state is the only reason any of these people celebrate New Years wtf. The Chinese calendar is an inherently statist construct. It has been a statist concept for millennial before any group of people we would recognize as Korean even existed. The fact that it’s so closely tied to the state is why Occupied Koreans insist on there being a non-existent “Korean Calendar” in the first place. You have no understanding of where anything comes from or what the actual cultural significance is, and do everything you can to water it down into some meaningless bullshit like those people who insist Christmas is a secular holiday.
How Koreans or anybody else celebrates it is is irrelevant to whether it’s a seperate holiday. My family celebrates Chinese New Years by eating crab. Do I now get to demand that everyone have to wish me a happy Oregoncom New Year? The fact that people in Moscow celebrate the Gregorian New Year differently than people in New York doesn’t mean that they’re magically seperate holidays. The definition of a holiday is what they’re celebrating not how.
You certainly have one of the strangest takes I’ve ever seen a person make.
Don’t pass off your granddad’s lived experience off as your own lol. It doesn’t do anything to strengthen your argument besides making you look cringe in an effort to look authentic.
By your standards, Shogatsu is a different festival now that the date changed from the lunisolar calendar to the Gregorian. Obviously it’s the same holiday tradition that is celebrated on a different date! I don’t see how you’re being so obstinate when it is crystal clear. People are not celebrating some calendar date, they are celebrating their traditional new year celebration that has been practiced for more than a millenia.
That’s my point exactly, nobody goes around saying “Happy Japanese New Years” on Jan 1st, because the Japanese are just celebrating Gregorian new years like everybody else. Them celebrating it the way they used to celebrate Japanese new years in the past didn’t change that. Likewise with Russians, them carrying over traditions from celebrating Julian New Years doesn’t mean they celebrate a different holiday from Jan 1st.
One of my grandparents being raised by Chinese Koreans is more relevant than you knowing a random Chinese Korean guy lmao.
I see that we just have different definitions of what constitutes a holiday and it’s useless arguing. But I will maintain that the point of a New Years celebration is to celebrate the New Year. If any holiday is dependent on the Calendar its based off of then it would be New Years.