Looking for signs of a good Lunar New Year

Lunar New Year is a big event for the Chinese and Vietnamese communities in Orange County, which is home to the third-largest Asian American population in the U.S.

And the Asian Garden Mall in the heart of Little Saigon in Westminster has done it up big for the past 13 years. The festival began Jan. 15 and runs nightly through Feb. 6, featuring dancers in costume and other cultural traditions, including recognizing the role of superstition.

Superstitions, it seems, can be tricky.

For instance, mall vendors sell the traditional flowers, fruits and candy to prepare guests for the new year, which begins Feb. 8 this year. The date changes annually according to the Chinese lunar calendar.

Thuyai Truong, who has owned a flower booth at the festival since its start, said many of the items sold are intended to bring good fortune and prosperity.

“Every new year, people have the flowers,” said the saleswoman, who peddles orchids, peonies and blossoms. “They’re supposed to be bloomed, but there’s a superstition that if the flower dies on the first day of the new year, that means it’s bad luck for the whole year.”

The festival also sells traditional food, like lotus seeds, yams, coconut candy, kumquats, papayas and tangerines.

As with the flowers, Truong said, the delicacies, which are mostly sweet, are supposed to bring good luck to those who eat them.

“For the new year, everything you eat is supposed to be sweet,” she said. “If you cut open a fruit and it’s not sweet, that’s bad luck and means the year won’t go smoothly. That’s why candy is so popular this time of year too.

“You also have to be careful about what you wear. Don’t come to someone’s house dressed in black. That’s bad luck. In our country, if you live in Vietnam, you have to wear new clothes. Over here, we just wear something nice. Red, yellow and orange are the lucky colors.”

Families recently gathered outside the Asian Garden Mall, some adults and children holding red envelopes with money inside.

The drums started pounding and then it appeared, the black, pink and green dragon — or lion, depending on whom you ask — created by a troupe of dancers in costume.

As the “animal” approached her, a little girl placed her red envelope, called lai see, or hongbao, in its mouth. Superstition says this grants her good luck for the year.

The lion dance is part of the mall’s annual flower festival, which is held in the weeks leading up to the Lunar New Year.

Lyna Le, office manager for Bridgecreek Development, which manages the mall, said the items pertaining to the monthlong celebration are stocked well ahead of the new year.

“When the new year comes, you should already have all of these things they’re selling here,” Le said.

She said the festival has about 40 vendors this year, nearly double the amount in 2003.

Le said she believes it is so popular because of how much the new year means to people in Asian cultures.

“Our new year is essentially as big as Christmas,” she said. “Thousands of people come to shop and buy things for the new year to decorate their home and spend time with their families. There’s also a more cultural act, where you have to pray to your ancestors. Some of those items that you’d have to buy are fruits and flowers for the altar, and also new year candies.”

In the Vietnamese and Chinese cultures, the new year is a time of relaxation and no work, said Edward Doan, who sells red envelopes and decorations, like lanterns, at the festival.

“Vietnamese and Chinese people in Vietnam and China love springtime because they’re mostly migrant workers,” he said. “All year long, they’re constantly working and then this is the one time of the year that they take a whole month off. The Vietnamese culture is that we always start the year on a good foot with a clean house, a lot of food and water. It’s just like a perfect start.”