Lunar New Year Celebration
Year of the Snake
Asia Plaza - 30th and Payne, Cleveland February 1 and 2, 2025
The Lunar New Year or Spring Festival is commonly referred to as Chinese New Year, Tet in Vietnamese, Seollal in Korean, Losar in Tibet, and Tsagaan Sar in Mongolian.
On January 29, 2025, we entered the Year of the Wood Snake.
According to National Geographic, the snake holds a dual symbolism in Chinese traditions. It is directly associated with yin, reflecting introspection, wisdom, and mystery. But let's not forget one of the snake's greatest needs: shedding its skin. This action symbolizes regeneration, longevity, and prosperity. If you were born in the Year of the Snake, according to the Chinese zodiac, you are intelligent, cunning, and charming. If you were born during the Wood Snake cycle, it adds an extra layer of characteristics because the wood element is associated with creativity, expansion, sociability, and charm, so an individual born under this sign has a much more open, adaptable, and relationship-oriented personality.
Your Chinese zodiac sign is a snake if you were born during the following years: 1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001, 2013 and 2025. Only those born in 1965 and 2025 are Wood Snakes.
There was a two-day celebration of Lunar New Year at Asia Plaza organized by OCAGC president Lisa Wong. Lisa is the driving force behind this event and the community owes her great thanks. Wayne Wong served as Master of Ceremonies for the performances and their son Alex Wong was also a great help.
MC Wayne Wong
Wayne welcomed the crowd and thanked the sponsors and also told some interesting stories and facts such as the difference between the Lion dance and the Dragon dance. Watch.
Wayne also told the folk tale of why there are twelve animals in the Chinese Zodiac. It involves a race between all animals with the first 12 finishers being rewarded with a year dedicated to them. Watch to see why there is no cat!
There were performances, lion dances, information booths, vendors, community resources, photo opps and, of course, food!
Asia Plaza was full of people who enjoyed authentic food such as dim sum inside Li Wah restaurant, specialty eggrolls from Blasian Fusion food truck, a Taste of the Philippines from the Parilya food truck, authentic Hong Kong Style bubble waffle from Ball Ball Waffle and more.
Each day, the main stage had a variety of performances such as Rosa Lee performing on the Guzheng (Chinese zither).
A highlight is always the Kwan Family Lion Dance Team who performed at the center stage but also traversed Asia Plaza and brought luck and prosperity to many restaurants and store fronts.
Ladies from the Cleveland Phoenix Club in beautiful costumes performed traditional Chinese dances such as in this video.
Near the end of their last song they brought out two big drums. They then posed for a group photo and wished everyone a Happy Lunar New Year. Watch.
Cleveland Phoenix Club Ladies
While the Chinese culture was well-represented, Lunar New Year is celebrated throughout SE Asia. The Sho-Jo-Ji Dancers are a Japanese dance group consisting of American girls of Japanese ancestry. The group was organized in 1955 under the sponsorship of the Japanese American Citizens League, Cleveland Branch, in order to preserve the traditional dances of Japan. Its first performance was in 1956. This is part of one of their dances.
A special treat was a first-time performance by a group of ladies from the island of Bali performing Indonesian dances.
And, of course, the Lunar New Year is called Tet in Vietnam. Gia Hoa Ryan is a leader of the Vietnamese community in Cleveland and she met a family newly arrived from Vietnam so we asked about Tet. Tet is the most important celebration in Vietnamese culture and is also the official birthday of everyone in Vietnam. As Gia Hoa Ryan explains in the video below, if you were born on November 30th for example, by the next Tet you would be considered to be 2 years old even though you were born just a few month ago!
ClevelandPeople.com was honored to be a Media Sponsor and have a table at the event. We brought our large map of Asia and it was very busy with people studying it and posing in front of it. As we like to do, we asked people to pose while pointing to the land of their heritage on the map. We were very happy at the diversity of people. The heritages included China, Burma (Myanmar), Malaysia, Korea, Japan, Philippines, Thailand, Laos, India, Indonesia, Taiwan and more. Here is a sample.
Pointing to the map of China
Pointing to the map of Vietnam
You can see dozens more of these fun and interesting photos on our Fun with Maps page
Do you recognize anyone?
Here are a few other images from the 2025 Lunar New Year celebration at Asia Plaza.
Whether you say Gong hei faat choy (Cantonese) or xin nian kuai le (Mandarin) or something else, we wish you a Happy Lunar New Year.
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