The battle of Chinese New Year

I am rather delighted to see the controversy about Chinese New Year aroused by the recent promotion that British Museum has conducted in collaboration with Korea Tourism Organization. In a Twitter posted by British Museum, their followers were invited to join them to celebrate the Korean Lunar New Year. This Twitter soon was too inappropriate to survive the denouncement of the Chinese community and was deleted.

Following this event, the English translation of Chinese New Year now becomes a trending topic. Thanks to these discussion, I learned that Lunar New Year is actually not the correct term. I have always known the accurate name for the Chinese calendar system is called “农历” in Chinese, which can be literally translated into Agricultural Calendar. According to Wikipedia, it’s simply translated into Chinese Calendar . What is very interesting here is that Chinese Calendar is a lunisolar calender, which combines the observation of the moon and the sun. That coins the classic Chinese concept of Yin Yang (阴阳). From 陈酿 on Zhihu , Islamic Calendar is actually the only Lunar Calendar currently used in the world. Therefore, Lunar New Year and Chinese New Year are never the same thing. Moreover, the Lunar New Year sometimes can fall in the middle of a year (for example, 9 August 2021), but it will never happen for the Chinese New Year.

There are a lot of inaccurate or even wrong conventional English translations for China, and sadly we usually have less saying to decide how we would like how ourselves to be translated and recognised; for example, when it comes to call the part of China where I live (i.e. the majority of China except Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan), the conventional English term is Mainland China. However, this would suggest that there is another China other than the mainland one. We definitely prefer to be called as Chinese Mainland instead of Mainland China, but as the power of speech does not fall on our side, this preference is just a preference. That’s why I am delighted to see these controversy, as this is how we might possibly correct those errors and gain our rights to satisfy our preference.

Some bystanders who are not part of all of these may think this is some Asian cultural war owned by the national chauvinists. I understand where this idea comes from, but I don’t agree with this. Speaking for myself, surely I wish for a united world where everyone live for one dream, just like how John Lennon imagined in Imagine. I don’t wish for a battlefield where people of different backgrounds fight for the ownership of shared culture. If Chinese New Year is not a diverse enough name, a more diverse name would definitely not be a name with another country’s name. If you are looking for the recommendation for an alternative name, please try Spring Festival next time.