The British Museum recently held an event to celebrate the Korean Lunar New Year, which was criticised by Chinese internet users for displaying "ignorance of history". They also accused Korea of stealing the Chinese Lunar New Year concept. The museum removed links to the event from its website and social media channels without explanation.
The celebration of a New Year to welcome spring is practised by many people in East and Southeast Asia. The celebration is usually referred as the Spring Festival in China. Chinese people and the Chinese diaspora generally greet each other with Happy New Year or Prosperous New Year (in Mandarin, Cantonese and the many other Chinese dialects). In some other East and Southeast Asian countries, for example Vietnam, the celebration is called 'Tet' and the Vietnamese would greet each other in their language with Happy New Year. Similarly, the Koreans celebrate 'Seollal' and greet each other in Korean with Happy or Lucky New Year.
When England China Business Forum (ECBF) was established in early 2013, David Cameron visited China later in December, and Xi Xing Ping returned the favour in 2015. We had a period of a golden era relationship with China, and we were scrambling to understand how to enter the market in China, build business relationships and protect our interests.
We would like to thank everyone who came to support our in person celebrations after a 3 year hiatus. We were initially planning for maybe 30-40 guests but ended up with a packed out event of 7 tables of 10 at the legendary "Dumplings Legends" on Gerrard Street taking over the whole of the 1st floor of the restaurant.
"Way before Covid was known, I started to detect anti-Chinese sentiments and musings. This wasn't just aimed - often aimlessly - at Chinese people, but anyone who 'looked' like them. Fast forward to the Pandemic, Sinophobia went through the roof when little else could leave the home. Conspiracy theorists - aided by far left and right politicians and certain media outlets - blamed, rightly or wrongly, the Chinese government for the outbreak. This led to Asian/Chinese businesses and people being violently attacked and victimised.
A few weeks ago, there were some social media feeds celebrating the 2nd anniversary of the opening of the Hong Kong British Nationality Overseas (BN(O)) scheme on the Home Office's Twitter, such as "the UK is proud to have welcomed 144,500 people from Hong Kong", "many Hong Kongers have said living in Britain is like coming home".
