I always know when Lunar New Year is approaching even before I check the date.
The cupboard is stocked with seasonal snacks: love letters, pineapple tarts, and my favourite, arrowhead chips. The house is cleaner than usual. And there are boxes of Yee Sang stacked on the counter.
For those who don’t celebrate Lunar New Year, I’ll let you in on a little secret: arguably the most important day is actually Lunar New Year Eve. It’s when families get together for a big family dinner and hope for prosperity in the coming year. It’s the dinner that has my mouth salivating in the lead-up. “We’ve booked to go to a big buffet dinner”, my mama (grandmother), who lives in Kuala Lumpur, tells me when I call.
This year, I really noticed the Lunar New Year was approaching. Even long before the lead-up to the reunion dinner. But it wasn’t because my Asian grocer had brought out the goods early, or because my family group chat had reminded me. But because the Lunar New Year arrived in my inbox.
Ferrari brought out a red packet with their horse logo on the front. Polo Ralph Lauren released a Year of the Horse collection “inspired by the seventh animal of the Chinese zodiac, a ground symbol of optimism, adventure, and vitality”. Even a brand like Acne Studios, who have no horse motifs as part of their branding, brought a Year of the Horse capsule collection.
According to Dynamic Business, Chinese tourists were responsible for over $9 billion in expenditure in 2025. So it makes sense why more and more brands want to capitalise on this holiday.
In a way, I appreciate it. Years ago, when my family first moved to Australia, the only sign of Lunar New Year I would see was at my family’s house or, specifically, at Asian grocers. Now the building across the road from my corporate workplace has a lion dance to mark the beginning of the holiday.
Celebrations of Chinese culture were particularly on the rise this year on TikTok with the ‘Chinese Era’ or ‘Chinamaxxing trend’. As someone who is half-Chinese, I have to admit I have been enjoying watching and engaging with the Chinamaxxing trend. It involves creators (some non-Asian) posting videos of themselves making Chinese tea, adopting Traditional Chinese Medicine practices, or making videos about a ‘Chinese time of my life’, all in the spirit of showcasing Chinese culture.
Growing up in Australia, Chinese or even Asian culture as a whole wasn’t always seen as a positive thing. It wasn’t out of the ordinary to experience subtle racist jokes about Asian food framed as “just banter” or being asked if you are “fresh off the boat”. This only increased during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
At face value, the ‘Chinese Era’ trend is a celebration of Chinese culture, after a period when Chinese culture hasn’t always been celebrated. But while I started off enjoying these videos, over time, they began to feel less celebratory and more performative. Doctor Fan Yang told SBS that there are two sides to this trend: it celebrates Chinese culture but could also perpetuate stereotypes. “The negative side…would be taking the culture at face value [saying] I want to be like this just because it’s trendy, without knowing why.”
It is always validating to see others enjoy your cultural practices. But participating in trends like these only further perpetuates what Edward Said coined as ‘the Oriental Other’. The Other, according to Said, is an inferior, often stereotypical image of those from Asia and the Middle East. While the Chinamaxxing trend can show an appreciation for Asian culture, it doesn’t necessarily inspire audiences to do anything about Asian racism or even to learn about the history of those whose trend they are creating content about.
TikTok creator @kalinaxkathy said in a video that “this interaction with the Other through food and cultural exchange goes unquestioned because it’s pleasurable, it’s positive, it’s healthy. Drinking hot water and saying you’re Chinese now doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t challenge white supremacy, it doesn’t change the material conditions for Asians and Asians across the diaspora, it’s just cultural cosplay disguised as appreciation.”
In the same vein, it feels like Lunar New Year in the 21st century has turned into a branding exercise for the corporate West. As the Asian diaspora has spread from Southeast Asia and into different communities across the world, the West has come to see how lucrative this holiday can be for them.
Growing up, I might have viewed the increase in Lunar New Year marketing as a win. But now, I’m not interested in commodification. I want normalisation. I want Asian kids in school not to feel embarrassed about having rice for lunch. Or for people online to stop saying they are “rebranding themselves in the name of the year of the horse” without knowing what that means.
Because it’s not really a celebration of a culture if we need to make our culture more palatable for others.
My family isn’t as traditional as some families when it comes to celebrating Lunar New Year. This is part of being part of a Chinese-Malaysian/Indian-Malaysian household. As I write this, I can smell the crab curry my mum has prepared for reunion dinner. I know she also has two ang pows stashed away for my brother and me. After our dinner, I’ll call my mama and wish her Gong Xi Fa Cai.
And when we sit down to eat, the Yee Sang prepped and ready, I’ll be reminded that no brand campaign or TikTok trend could ever really encapsulate this experience.