By Victoria Cha
As Lunar New Year approaches and families prepare their annual traditions, celebrations are looking a little different for international students at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) who are trying to navigate this cultural holiday away from their hometowns.
The holiday, based on the lunar calendar, marks the beginning of a new year and falls on Jan. 29 this year. From handing out money to relatives and sharing meals together, to cleansing personal space and cutting hair, traditions revolve around spending time with others and resetting your life to welcome a fresh start.
With significant focus on connection and community, international students accustomed to celebrating the holiday in their home countries have had to adapt to spending the new year in Toronto without its familiar aspects.
According to National Geographic, Lunar New Year is celebrated by over one billion people in various countries around Asia including China, Japan and more. Each family commemorates the holiday differently with some focusing on more familiar routines that are centred around refreshing the household or spending time with loved ones.
“We can go there to celebrate the holiday with them and meet more Vietnamese international students”
Back home in China, second-year creative industries student Qianxi Liu’s family focused simply on togetherness.
“In China, we spend almost a month celebrating. Before and after the new year, we do different things each day,” said Liu. “We clean the house, we do decorations, we go to the temple and burn incense to pray for something, or we gather all our relatives to eat.”
Others, like second-year RTA media production student Liesl Korompis, have more specific traditions that occur within larger get-togethers.
“My mom is Malaysian-Chinese so sometimes when we go back to Malaysia, we [do] this tradition where there’s a bunch of noodles in the centre of the table and everyone grabs their chopsticks and messes it up, and everyone takes it to their own plates,” she said.
When it comes to cultural holidays like Lunar New Year, community and food play a significant role in special traditions. Unfortunately, these are the aspects that international students have struggled to find in Toronto.
“There’s less Vietnamese people and [Lunar New Year isn’t] celebrated everywhere. If you want to celebrate it, you have to be with those people,” said second-year RTA media production student Minh Chau Nguyen.
Due to this disconnect, some students just haven’t felt the ability to celebrate the holiday in the city. “I don’t have too many Chinese friends here. I only have one or two, so I don’t really think I can find anyone to celebrate with,” said Liu.
Finding community isn’t the only thing international students have struggled with in Toronto. Searching for home through literal taste has also been a challenge.
“There isn’t really a lot of Indonesian culture [in Toronto], especially compared to other cultures I’ve seen,” said Korompis. “It’s hard to find Indonesian food here, there’s probably only a couple restaurants.”
For Hy (Kyle) Tran, a fourth-year creative industries student, not having the necessary outlets to practice annual traditions has only emphasized the distance between him and his family who are back home, celebrating in the same ways they always have.
“You feel a huge [fear of missing out] because all your family members will be posting, talking in the group chat and you’re like ‘Oh wait, [I’m] the only one away,’” he said.
“I feel more disoriented. I feel lost sometimes because you feel like you’re in between these two countries and you don’t quite belong fully to one”
Similar to Tran, fourth-year business management student Phuong-Nhi (Jessie) Tran-Nguyen hasn’t spent the new year with her family in five years.
“I miss my family the most. During the week of Lunar New Year, everyone [in my family] comes back to my hometown for gatherings,” said Tran-Nguyen. “Right now, everyone’s already there, except me.”
A study published by the Cambridge University Press discusses how psychological aspects of a geographic move include homesickness.
According to the study, experiencing homesickness can come from “a strong preoccupation with thoughts of home, a perceived need to go home, a sense of grief for the home (people, place and things) and a concurrent feeling of unhappiness, disease and disorientation in the new place.”
Celebrating cultural holidays in a place that’s void of the familiar qualities that make it so comes with a lot of difficulties.
Without this sense of familiarity, some TMU students try to replicate their favourite traditions as best as they can to make Lunar New Year even just a tiny bit as special as it is back home.
Tran gathers his friends and together, they take part in common practices like shared meals and red envelopes—where people would enclose money and gift it to younger relatives.
“I have some Vietnamese friends that I celebrate with. The community is quite strong with my friends so usually, we gather everyone around and do a little potluck. We give money at more of our level, like 20 dollars,” said Tran.
For those who don’t have the means to celebrate, homesickness becomes a more prominent issue.
“I miss how energetic [Lunar New Year] was and how you could see in the streets that everyone was celebrating,” said Nguyen. “Here, it’s like no one’s celebrating it. You have to go to your community to see it.”
Others have sought out events hosted by those in the East Asian community that will offer them some kind of resemblance to the celebrations they take part in back at home.
“You feel a huge [fear of missing out] because all your family members will be…talking in the group chat and you’re like ‘Oh wait, [I’m] the only one away”
Liu volunteered for the Toronto Spring Festival Fireworks Celebration, which was held on Jan. 25 at Nathan Phillips Square.
“They have a lot of events. They’re hosting shows, you can enjoy the food and there will be fireworks. You can also try on our traditional clothing. It’s my first time volunteering there, but I’m excited,” said Liu.
More local events that students can rely on are the ones held by TMU student groups like the Toronto Met Viet Student Association (VSA), which is hosting a Lunar New Year celebration on Feb. 5 that Tran-Nguyen looks forward to attending.
“I really like the VSA. They’re running [an] event for every holiday, and it’s so good,” said Tran-Nguyen. “We can go there to celebrate the holiday with them and meet more Vietnamese international students.”
While Toronto may be a diverse and multifaceted city offering a variety of resources, accessibility to important aspects of certain cultures—especially as a special holiday approaches—isn’t one of them. Because of this, the City of Toronto has kickstarted a plan to improve its cultural scene.
The inability to practice important traditions has made Lunar New Year a distinct experience for international students at TMU who either forgo the holiday altogether or develop the right means to partake in it under different circumstances.
“I feel more disoriented. I feel lost sometimes because you feel like you’re in between these two countries and you don’t quite belong fully to one,” said Nguyen.
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