Long before lanterns and fire horse Decorations were being put up on the streets of Australia, Coco Zhang was planning her first Lunar New Year pilgrimage.
The 22-year-old Chinese student moved to Melbourne last year to study and, after six months away from her family, decided to buy a ticket to Shanghai for the cultural festival, which starts today.
‘Seeing my parents again, just being with my family, having dinner for the family and [being in] I think the loving atmosphere is the greatest [takeaway for the trip]”, she tells SBS News.
Zhang is one of millions of people from Asian diaspora communities around the world who make the annual pilgrimage, which marks the start of the lunar calendar.
Despite the expensive plane tickets and long journeys, many say it is a chance to connect with family and cultural roots.
SBS News spoke to four people from Australia’s Asian diaspora who traveled to their cultural homelands as part of this year’s festivities. From tasting traditional food to a sense of belonging, they say the Lunar New Year pilgrimage is about more than just visiting family and friends.
Bringing a taste of Australia to Asia
Before heading home, Zhang knew she wanted to find a special gift for her mother and friends – one that would be “a symbol of an Australian souvenir”.
When she walked into a shopping center in Melbourne and saw a stall selling the famous (and cheeky) Australian Fireman Calendar, she knew she had to take some back to China.
“Two of them I gave to my friends, and one of them I gave to my mother,” said Zhang.
The calendar was first launched in 1993 to raise money for burn research at the Children’s Hospital Foundation and has since raised millions for other charities.
“My mom says it was fantastic. She’s never seen anything like it before.”
Zhang also packaged Australian-branded cookies and chocolates, popular gift options for many Asian Australians traveling to Asia during the Lunar New Year.
Queenslander Jeong Hoon Bae tells SBS News he returned to South Korea this year with bags of snacks and soft kangaroo toys for his niece and nephew.
“Australia has a lot of good snacks and chocolates, crisps and walnuts. We brought some samples and they all loved them, wondering why they hadn’t been imported [to South Korea],” he says.
Try ‘Authentic’ Asian food
Bae, who has lived in Australia for more than 20 years, said he was returning to South Korea for the first time early this year to attend a friend’s wedding. But when he noticed that the date was close to Lunar New Year, he decided to stay longer.
“I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to just meet my relatives and spend some time together, because Lunar New Year obviously means a lot in Korean culture as well,” he says.
Since his arrival, he has spent his time trying authentic Korean dishes and seafood sold by street vendors and local markets, and eating at Korean BBQ restaurants, which have become popular in Australia.
“[Korean BBQ is] also big in Australia, but I think it has a little more authenticity in Korea.”
Barry Han, a 27-year-old Chinese student who has been studying in Melbourne for five years, also tells SBS News that he returned to China with a list of food items he wanted to try.
He explains that while Melbourne offers a wide range of Chinese food, options from his hometown of Kaifeng, in central Henan province, are rare.
“In Kaifeng city, there is a famous dish with soup dumplings and animal blood products, such as chicken blood soup and other things. And also donkey soup,” Han said.
“I like them a lot, but I don’t know if they sell them in Australia.
I want to taste everything I’ve been missing for so long.
Similarly, Zhang, who has only been living in Australia for a few months, has a list of restaurants she wants to visit for sentimental reasons – places where she hung out with family and friends before heading to Australia.
But she also craves hot pot, “because traditional hot pot is hard to find in Melbourne”.
Forging new memories
The ten-day festival is often marked by important ceremonial events and customs that vary by culture.
Now that he has returned to South Korea, Bae says he will celebrate the Lunar New Year by participating in family gatherings and performing traditional customs such as sebae – a deep traditional bow for elderly relatives – during festival greetings.
Han, who describes his hometown as “a very traditional cultural zone of China”, expects to follow a strict ceremonial schedule during the Lunar New Year – unlike his previous celebrations in Melbourne, which were quieter.
“In Australia, [I have] there is no family there, so I celebrate the Lunar New Year with friends,” said Han, adding that he and his friends would get together during that period.
“It’s a bit like carnival. We don’t really care.”
But this year, as part of his pilgrimage to China, Han has also embarked on a family adventure. A week before Lunar New Year, he left for the southwestern province of Yunnan – 1,400 km away from his birthplace – to visit his brother, who is undergoing professional cycling training there.
“He can’t come with us to Kaifeng to celebrate the Lunar New Year, so we decided to visit him for a week,” says Han.
Thu Nguyen, a 44-year-old Vietnamese Australian from Melbourne, is also celebrating this Lunar New Year by traveling through Vietnam with her family, but for special reasons.
A few weeks ago, Nguyen traveled with her 80-year-old mother to the Mekong Delta region, where her family and ancestors come from.
It is the first time she has visited the graves of her great-grandparents.
While there, Nguyen says she tried to find her mother’s old house, but suspects it was one of the houses burned during the Vietnam War in the 1970s.
Later, at a local market, an older lady stopped her and her mother. It turned out that she was a neighbor of Nguyen’s mother.
“We hugged each other and cried,” says Nguyen.
It is a very emotional journey for our family.
Nguyen also attended the Australia Day celebrations in Ho Chi Minh City last month.
“I recently became an Australian citizen on January 26, so for me, returning to Vietnam feels like a full-circle moment to honor where I come from,” she says.
Experiencing culture shock
While the Lunar New Year celebration may have similarities between countries, some aspects may be unfamiliar, especially to those who have spent a lot of time in Australia.
In many places the festival is celebrated as a national holiday. Shops in Vietnam are often closed during the Lunar New Year, which Nguyen said was an adjustment at first.
She also believes the pace in Vietnam is “faster and louder” compared to Australia. When meeting friends, she may not immediately understand the latest Vietnamese celebrity and entertainment gossip, which can make her feel “a little out of place”.
Regardless, she says that from the moment her plane landed in Ho Chi Minh City, she felt “instantly at home.”
“I left the airport, went to the store, the store with the boiled fresh coconut juice, grabbed the whole bunch of coconut and drank it, and I just sat there watching the people passing by, waiting for my brother to pick me up,” she says.
Nguyen also reflects on the sense of dissonance she experiences during her travels between Australia and Asia: “I see that as [part] When you live in two cultures, you don’t lose one, but you learn how to move between them [them].”
For international students like Han and Zhang, trips back to Asia during the Lunar New Year can help rekindle relationships and memories from home that may have faded due to distance and loneliness.
“Maybe because I come from a small town, I feel like going back to China, back to my hometown, the relations between people are close,” Han said.
Bae says returning to Asia from Australia for the holidays allows him to take a break and gain perspective.
“I think the biggest benefit for me is that I get to experience Korea, as an outsider, but also as a Korean person,” Bae says.
“And when you live abroad like Australia, you are busy with work and responsibilities. It is not easy to see your families from Australia to Korea,” he says.
“We sometimes forget how precious the moments we spend with your families really are.”
This story was created in collaboration with SBS Korean And SBS Vietnamese.
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