Year of the Dragon: Celebrating Chinese New Year in Hainan

Once a year, my home is decorated with grapefruits, oranges and wall hangings for the Lunar New Year. We purchase these supplies from Oakland’s Chinatown — its streets decorated with festive banners and lanterns.

But for the first time in my life, I celebrated the holiday in China. From the moment I stepped off the tarmac into the Haikou airport in Hainan, I knew the festivities at home would be minuscule in comparison.

Glowing red lanterns lined every walk of the airport and every street; hotels boasted massive fake orange trees with red envelopes glued on to every branch. Weaving through motorcycles and huge families, I counted at least 20 storefronts on Haikou’s “Old Street” with extravagant lantern displays, leading into shelves of paper cutting and red envelope designs. 

On New Year’s Eve, we stayed at my great uncle’s house in the countryside. We did the same pre-dinner rituals that I do at home, which consist of preparing a meal, lighting incense and burning fake money for ancestors.

The next day we continued our festivities. My family and I lit up firecrackers at 5:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day. A huge variety of explosives were available in village shops, though not in the bigger cities. We bought everything from pea-sized poppers to full-on fireworks.

My parents set off a small string of firecrackers outside our home 20 years ago and neighbors almost called the police on them, so I’ve never been able to experience that tradition at home before this trip. We stayed in Wenchang the following days, which is a city right next to the ocean.

A big dinner of Wenchang chicken, fish, beef, vegetable dishes and soup is the center of my typical New Year’s Eve back at home. But in Hainan, every single lunch and dinner was twice as extravagant as my “big dinner.”

Hainan is an island, so the seafood is delicious. But it’s also famous for its chicken. Many village households raise and butcher their own chickens, so I had some of the freshest chicken you can get. I can’t count the amount of times I was told to eat more.

One of the most apparent cultural norms I noticed during my week in Hainan was how welcoming and willing Chinese people are to consider you family, which I think especially applies during the Lunar New Year.

Since my mom lived in Hainan for the first 21 years of her life, she has countless friends and family members that still live there or were visiting home for the holiday. We had meals with her middle and high school friends, friends-of-friends. We chatted with people she hadn’t seen in 32 years and stayed with people who required a long explanation to explain our relation to. On the third day of the new year, we had lunch with over 20 family members.

At home, we don’t have anyone in close enough proximity to visit during the holiday, so it’s just my immediate family. Seeing everyone in Hainan come together and be excited to connect with me — even through language barriers — made me so appreciative of the gatherings. It was challenging, but well worth it when my fragmented Hainanese and Mandarin vocabulary and my second cousin’s modest English could get through to other people. 

The incredible hospitality, kindness, familial love and spirit I witnessed and felt on my trip started my Year of the Dragon in the best way possible.

Audrey La Jeunesse (she/her) is a freelance writer with YR Media’s AAPI team.

Edited by Amber Ly