STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.\u2014A community Lunar New Year celebration planned for Feb. 22 at 11 Clove Lake Place (I.S. 27) was canceled due to inclement weather, organizers announced Sunday around 9 a.m.<\/p>\n
The event had been scheduled in two sessions and was expected to draw more than 1,000 people for music, dance, lion and dragon performances, and a lucky draw. Assemblyman Charles Fall was set to host the celebration alongside Aurora Genesis and NACAA, with support from Speaker Carl Heastie\u2019s Intergovernmental & External Affairs team.<\/p>\n
Local organizations including Urban United Association, Autism Care Alliance, Happy Life and UCA had partnered to support the event. Three restaurants\u2014HK\u2019s Kitchen, Siam Thai Eatery and Empire Szechuan\u2014were prepared to donate food and beverages. Lion dancers and a food vendor waited outside the school as early as 8 a.m. before the cancellation was announced.<\/p>\n
The holiday began Feb. 17 and runs through the Lantern Festival on March 3, marking the Year of the Fire Horse. Organizers used the term \u201cLunar New Year,\u201d commonly adopted in multicultural settings to reflect that the holiday is celebrated not only in Chinese communities but also in Vietnamese, Korean and other Asian cultures. Some Chinese Staten Islanders said they are more familiar with \u201cChinese New Year,\u201d the name tied to their own traditions and family heritage.<\/p>\n
Despite the cancellation, the season\u2019s customs continue across the borough through foods rich in symbolic meaning, according to Sunny Ng of East Pacific at the Staten Island Mall. Among them: dumplings shaped like ancient gold ingots for wealth and prosperity, and whole fish served with head and tail intact for abundance, as the Chinese word for fish, y\u00fa, echoes the word for \u201csurplus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Long noodles symbolize long life, Ng said, and golden spring rolls resemble gold bars. Oranges and tangerines bring good fortune with their bright color. Even pineapple\u2014featured in dishes like pineapple fried rice at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden\u2019s celebration at the Newhouse Art Gallery on Feb. 11\u2014carries auspicious meaning, as its name echoes a phrase welcoming prosperity in the new year. From restaurants to home tables across the borough, the season endures in dishes that symbolize abundance, hope and good luck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.\u2014A community Lunar New Year celebration planned for Feb. 22 at 11 Clove Lake Place (I.S.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-141883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}