‘Historic and symbolic’: Leaders from Spokane’s Asian communities excited for first local Lunar New Year celebrations in over 80 years

UPDATED: Thu., Jan. 20, 2022
By Amber D. Dodd amberd@spokesman.com


For the first time in 89 years, Spokane organizations will be kicking off the Lunar New Year with an outdoor celebration.

Under Spokane United We Stand, many local members of the Asian community came together to make sure the Feb. 5 event would get proper attention to detail. It starts at 1 p.m. at the U.S. Pavilion in Riverfront Park, with fireworks after dark.

Ping Ping Zhou, from Guangzhou, China, wanted to ensure the event mirrored the Lunar New Year Celebrations she experienced as a child.

“This is a day to honor your culture and get together with the people who have the same feelings and nostalgias of the Lunar New Year,” Zhou said. “I still treasure these memories because it gives people a home feeling, it definitely comforts people’s minds, their hearts, as we miss the days we were in China.”

This year marks the Year of the Tiger. Traditional Chinese astrology states that those born in Hu, the year of the Tiger, are brave, competitive, unpredictable and confident. In traditional Asian culture, instead of celebrating the calendar new year on Jan. 1, the Chinese New Year is celebrated between Jan. 21 to Feb. 20, depending on the moon cycle.

After the sudden rise of anti-Asian violence, Ping Ping Zhou, Charity Bagatsing and Vina Cathcart came together for a local discussion.

“We decided that it really didn’t matter whether you were Filipino, Japanese or Korean,” said Bagatsing, who is of Filipino and Southeast Indian descent. “If you fit the physical profile of the slanted eyes, it doesn’t matter what your background is. You’re a target. So we started with that and united with that.”

After addressing anti-Asian crimes, other community members thought the unification could be multi-purposed to celebrate the Asian community.

“We find as an organization of Spokane’s United We Stand, the more you know about their experiences and backstory, they’re humans. You find more connections than differences, and that’s what we want to do in our events,” Cathcart said.

Zhou wants to celebrate the current year but also the history of Asian immigrants in Spokane, dating back to the 1800s. Celebrations for the Lunar New Year in Spokane date back to the late 1880s, before the popular Lilac Parade .

“This means a lot to the Japanese and Chinese community, and laborers were here,” Zhou said. ” So, this event will bring this under the light and I think this is really important message that needs to be send out.”

For Bagatsing, the Lunar New Year is a special opportunity for the wide range of Asian communities to come together. About 5 billion people, 60% of Earth’s population, reside on the Asian continent, making it harder to celebrate a collective event that all can participate in.

“Having us unite is a little bit more challenging,” she said. “For us to come together as one and unite was really something to celebrate.”

Bagatsing wants the event to be a moment of the collective representation and pride of the Asian community as it connects Spokane’s Asian population to their native homelands.

“We have performances from the Chinese, Filipino, the Thai and the Southeast Indian, the Taiwanese, the Indonesians, Koreans and some of the other cultural groups are doing cultural displays. It’s an Asian Pride Day,” she said.

Cathcart grew up working in her parents’ Vina Asian Restaurant while growing up in Spokane. The food has been a bridge back to her parents’ Vietnamese origins. She hopes events like this can strengthen other people’s ties to their homeland.

“We want it to turn into something where they can learn and understand that this Lunar New Year is an essential part of Asian culture and Asian heritage,” Cathcart said. “Especially older adults, those of us who actually experience growing up and having a little bit more ties to our homeland, we want to keep those ties nice and strong so that the future generations aren’t just feeling a sense of loss.”

The Lunar New Year celebration will start at 1 p.m. It will end with a firework show to align with the ancient Chinese tradition of setting off fireworks to scare off evil spirits. For the many Asian organizations that came together to purchase over $10,000 worth of fireworks, it was a great preview to how the celebration should go.

“The businesses and individuals have come in to support this event because it’s historic and symbolic,” Bagatsing said. “If you want to know where your heart is, you can put your money into this and stand in unity together. And the entire community is invited, so learn about our culture, our arts, our tradition and our food.”

Amber D. Dodd's work as the Carl Maxey Racial and Social Inequity reporter for Eastern Washington and North Idaho primarily appears in both The Spokesman-Review and The Black Lens newspapers, and is funded in part by the Michael Conley Charitable Fund, the Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund, the Innovia Foundation and other local donors from across our community. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.