On the one hand it doesn't matter. On the other hand, this is the exact kind of rhetorical salami slicing that western propaganda engages in against it's enemies. I think in the context of rising Sinophobia and Asian people getting hatecrimed on the streets, it is good and useful to push back against this sort of thing.

Idk about you but I've seen stores and restaurants near me brand clearly Chinese things as "Hong Kongnese" or "Taiwanese", presumably to avoid hate crimes and backlash. One particularly egregious example is that news headline that framed 冰糖葫芦 as a Korean snack:

Edit: I think a good comparison is pushing back when Israel tries to claim falafel as its own dish. Falafel won't stop being delicious either way and it's not a hill to die on, but fuck Israel for trying.

filling my guts with Пероги for a heckin slavy the ukraine to celebrate lunar new years

as a black person...

Well that makes sense. Chinese New Year is not called Chinese New Year in China, it’s just the New Year.

When you go somewhere where “New Year” or “Lunar New Year” means something else, for example the Gregorian New Year, the generic term that works in your own country might cause confusion for others, necessitating a distinction.

But within an American context, specifically relating to the Chinese diaspora, the shift in terminology is undeniably due to the political climate vis-a-vis China.

Those are different holidays.

What we “celebrate” in the west is Chinese new year. It has red envelopes and a rabbit in the zodiac, which means it’s not Vietnamese New Year or Malaysian New Year or Japanese New Year, which are distinct and different holidays

Friendly reminder to Liberals that flattening culture and being a “cultural melting pot” is genocide and white supremacy. Culture is defined by its distinctiveness and specificity, the more you broaden it and make it vague the more you destroy it.

The idea of “cultural melting pot” came out of a Fordist-type industrialist making his employees in the US do a play where they go into the pot in their indigenous and cultural outfits and all come out with suits and the same hair cut. This is the process you are attempting to apply to a Chinese holiday to remove it or it’s specific features and erase it

the barista at starbucks wished me a bountiful LUNAR new year! wokeness has gone mad!

Christians aren’t the subject of a racist moral panic. Chinese people are.

My hometown has a lot of Chinese people and a lot of Vietnamese people. Lunar New Year seems appropriate.

Genshin impact is made by libs who will submit to whatever bullshit the west comes up with to make more money.

You can still celebrate Chinese culture, you just have to make it clear you’re not “connected to the PRC”.

Chinese people having to change the names of their holidays in the west because of this is not a “nothingburger”.

It is not “more inclusive”. Unless you think it’s also more inclusive to stop calling Ramadan “Ramadan” and start calling it “the fasting”. In fact, it ignores the diversity of different lunar new years in different cultures.

Chinese New Year is a distinct, Chinese holiday. It is not the same as the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, for example.

In order to conform with the new extreme anti-China zeitgeist, references specifically to the Chinese Lunar New Year are being replaced with the generic term “Lunar New Year”.

The problem is that the US's conception of Lunar New Year is basically Chinese New Year, so it's very obvious that the push has more to do with malding over China than being inclusive. For example, giving kids red envelopes is largely done in Chinese New Year and Vietnamese New Year (Tet). For Japanese New Year, they have a totally different style of envelope and for Malaysia, the envelopes are green. So, if your "Lunar New Year" is just giving out envelopes of a particular design with a particular color, then it's more whitewashing than inclusivity. Different Lunar New Year has different traditions. Chinese New Year and Tet might share the same color envelopes, but the Chinese zodiac and Vietnamese zodiac are different. Last year was Year of the Rabbit in China but Year of the Cat in Vietnam, so if your "Lunar New Year" celebrates the year of the rabbit last year, then "Lunar New Year" isn't Tet because the rabbit isn't part of the Vietnamese zodiac. And as a final point, the Lunar New Year isn't universal, meaning it can fall on different days depending on what country you're talking about. So, it isn't a given that Chinese New Year and Tet fall on the same day and if your "Lunar New Year" perfectly matches the date of Chinese New Year, then "Lunar New Year" is just Chinese New Year.

You can see this in the 2023 Lunar New Year article from CNN: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/lunar-new-year-2023-illustrated-guide-hnk-intl/index.html

1. "Saying goodbye to the Tiger, we enter the Year of the Rabbit on January 22, 2023." Goes back to what I said about Tet being the Year of the Cat, so they're already excluding a particular lunar new year.

2. The first graphic is just the basic aesthetics associated with Chinese New Year. Red is only the definitive lunar new year color for Chinese New Year and Tet. It's not particularly relevant for the other lunar new years. Eastern dragons aren't that prominent in the other lunar new years either. Some of the other zodiacs don't even have the dragon.

3. The spring banner graphic. I mean, it's just stuff written in Chinese. People in Korea aren't hanging up red banners with Hanja lol. I don't even know if those Chinese phrases are meaningful in Korean Hanja.

4. The food is just Chinese food. Every lunar new year has their own particular set of dishes to consume with their own particular symbolic meaning. Like, it would actually be inclusive if they had a dish for each different lunar new year, but it's just Chinese food for totally-not Chinese New Year.

5. Going back to what I said earlier about red envelopes, that's largely a Chinese New Year and Tet thing.

6. Xin nian kuai le and gung hei faat coi are just greetings in varieties of Chinese. One Japanese greeting during Japanese New Year per Wikipedia is kotoshi mo yoroshiku o-negai-shimasu. For Tet, Vietnamese people would say Chúc mừng năm mới. It isn't really inclusive if you only have traditional Chinese greetings in your article about not-Chinese New Year.

7. Goes back to my earlier point about different Asian countries having different zodiacs. You can't really have a one-size fits all zodiac, so they settled for the Chinese zodiac.

8. At the end of the article, we finally have acknowledgment that other Asian countries other than China exist. Like, they had a grand total of two sentences devoted to lunar new year traditions that aren't related to Chinese New Year.

Taken by itself, you could chalk this up to dumbass white people thinking Asia is just China, but given the geopolitical realities between the US and China and the role of MSM as a component of the state apparatus, as shown in the ridiculous weather balloon saga, we absolutely cannot give these dumbass white people the benefit of the doubt.

Except the Chinese calendar is not lunar, it's lunisolar. Also, dozens of other regions, cultures, and religions have their own lunar calendars which have new year's at a different time.

So by being "inclusive", not only is the term inaccurate, it also erases the lunar new years of other cultures.

I don't get it either. I'm from one of these countries that celebrate the Lunar New Year but live in the imperial core, and I've been to parties or gatherings with a mix of East asians celebrating and I don't think anyone there took issue with it being called Lunar New Year as a quick reference to the different holidays around the same time. You can phone your parents and use your own lingo then but when returning to English it really is no big deal?

I get the "Chinese" in CNY being a boogeyman thing for western whitewashed people, but personally as someone from East Asia I think Hexbear who think this is 100% a Sinophobic thing should log off and go to a new year party.

No it’s specifically made to de-Chinafy it and is clearly done via sinophobia due to the recent push.

Using “inclusion” to bulldoze and destroy culture is disgusting. It’s more inclusive to make Hanukkah non-Jewish amirite? Why don’t we just call it Candelabrah and make it non-denominational for everyone to be more inclusive :)

I like it lol

How was last year my 2 favorite animals and it still sucked so hard?

how can it be year of the rabbit AND year of the cat

They called it lunar new year on steam at least as far back as 2019 because I have some emotes from then