by Yufeng Liu & Jeemin Kim
Illustration by Fay Qian
It is no longer news that Chinese and Korean netizens oftentimes engage in bitter arguments over cultural controversies, such as the Hanbok at Beijing Winter Olympics last year. Their dispute, however, now spills over to bystanders – even within our communities at LSE. At the start of Lent (Autumn) Term, a “Happy Lunar New Year” news feed on LSE Student Hub blew up. Tens of replies, mostly from Chinese students, demanded the School correct the phrase from ‘Lunar’ to ‘Chinese New Year’. The school chose to remain silent while students soon became occupied by coursework as time went by.
More confrontational remarks were exchanged beyond the ivory tower. On 12 January, the British Museum tweeted an event ‘celebrating Korean Lunar New Year’ which would exhibit Korean customs. Angry replies stormed the tweet, condemning the Museum for ‘helping Koreans to steal Chinese culture’, and claiming that the traditional festival should be titled ‘Chinese New Year’. The original post was soon deleted, and ten days later, the Museum posted a new tweet about an exhibited Chinese artefact with the hashtag ‘#ChineseNewYear’, a gesture taken to mean surrender.
While many dismiss these disputes as the ‘internet nationalism’ of the younger generations of Chinese, Koreans also appear rather compulsive. Under the British Museum’s new tweet, the top reply – written in Korean – rehashes the blame on the Chinese for only making ‘counterfeit products’ and being responsible for the origin of COVID-19. Better-organised efforts came from VANK, an internet-based Korean organisation devoted to ‘cyber-diplomacy’, which in 2019 campaigned for the use of the term ‘Lunar New Year’ instead of ‘Chinese New Year’ among English websites and media, including Google Search results.
Understandably, some have undertaken great efforts to arbitrate this delicate situation. Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, issued three consecutive statements – all dated 22 January – wishing his diverse constituents a happy Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese New Year(s). Must there be an -s’ for plural? Do we need to view them separately when everyone celebrates on the same day for the same reason?
There is little debate about the origin of the calendar and the date of the New Year. Through Imperial China’s tributary network, their lunisolar calendar was spread to neighbouring countries. Historically, official calendars in East Asian countries were administered by a handful of Confucian scholars who specialised in astronomy. Across nations, East Asian calendars remain similar in technical terms, such as the method of calculating years and months. The New Year, by definition the first day on the calendar, naturally falls on the same day.
For some, this justifies labelling the festival ‘Chinese’ – but the same date hardly implies the same customs. If we were to compare the food cultures for instance, ‘Tteokguk’ (rice cake soup) is Korean traditional cuisine on the New Year, while “Jiaozi” (dumplings) and “Tangyuan” (stuffed rice balls) are the musts in Chinese kitchens. Etymologically, the Korean phrase “Seollal”, derived from Middle and Old Korean, means “Year’s Day”. Whereas in China, the official and ubiquitous term “Chunjie” literally means “Spring Festival”. The contemporary significance of the festival also differs; Koreans usually get a three-day public holiday to celebrate the new year, whereas in China the public holiday lasts for a week and the month-long school break is designed to coincide with the New Year.
Before social media popularised the English expression of Lunar New Year, the festival used to be each society’s own business. If one investigates the frontiers of this cultural warfare such as aforementioned tweets – it looks from the outside that these two groups of people with distinct linguistic heritage systems are all petitioning or protesting in English to demand the English-speaking world modify their wording. In fact, the English adjunct ‘Lunar’ is a superimposed misconception connoting scientific backwardness; ‘Lunisolar’ is technically more accurate. What once reflected a constellation of cultures is now a homonymous dictionary entry, satirically, not in the languages whose native speakers actually observe the festival. It’s a scramble for the power behind discourse under a cultural globalisation dominated by the English language. Perhaps Trudeau did a better job.
Roots of the dispute can also be traced back to East Asian societies. The cultural controversies are now reformulated as a matter of protecting our culture’. Behind this rhetoric is the defensive mindset permeating modern Chinese society, embattled by the ‘century of humiliation’ of constant colonial encroachment, exploitation, and invasion. Korea shares a similar history of colonialism and harsh repression throughout the 20th century, which has perhaps understandably resulted in the nationalistic sentiments of defending one’s country, culture, and the way of life.
Geopolitical trends further exacerbate the enduring fear of exogenous cultural threats diffused among the two societies. China’s party-state after Mao demands a new centripetal ideology to replace orthodox socialism when experiencing the déjà vu of being surrounded by ill-intentioned Western powers. Consequently, anxiety led China down the slippery slope into nationalism, generated by the fear that their heritages and even civilisation could be eroded by mislabelling and insufficient foreign recognition and awareness. To make things worse, the threat of inciting the populace has been leveraged as bargaining power in diplomatic conflicts; Suettinger recalls the mid-1990s great game over the Taiwan Strait, when Chinese diplomats pressured their US counterparts by instrumentalising the prospect of inciting domestic sentiment.
Regarding the New Year, however, the anxiety is misplaced: it was China that repeatedly attempted to erase the festival. In 1914, Generalissimo Yuan Shikai demanded the term ‘New Year’ be exclusively used for the Gregorian Calendar, whereas the traditional festival was renamed “Spring Festival”. In 1930, the Nationalist Government abolished the celebration of the ‘Old Calendar New Year’. In 1967, the People’s Republic ordered to “revolutionise” the observance and destroy the “Old Culture”. These attempts of course went fruitless, but the Chinese state needs to do more to preserve and promote the traditions that Chinese people are proud of.
Furthermore, the spread of misinformation for commercial gain is prevalent in both countries. Decentralised platforms like YouTube and WeChat Official Account have become cradles for distorted news, reinforcing the rising nationalist trend. Agitations are produced by online tabloids to attract public attention and thus profitability. Institutionalised censorship has quickened the business incentives of misinformation by restraining the scope of traditional journalism, pushing media to seek alternatives by promulgating sensational coverage of other countries. For example, a famous rumour circulated in China ten years ago accusing Korea of claiming Confucius to be Korean. There are also a number of more subtle rumours which often fabricates the opinion of the Korean people, regarding stances that most Koreans don’t know about, let alone support. The same phenomenon exists in South Korea, fueled by negative nationalistic feelings towards China, there was once a rumour circulating in South Korea that China was intentionally dumping fine dust into the Korea. The same phenomenon exists in South Korea, fueled by negative nationalistic feeling towards China, there was once a rumour circulating in South Korea that China was intentionally dumping fine dust into the Korea.
Hostility is the unavoidable outcome for those immersed in misinformation, especially given people’s hyper-focus on ‘defending their culture’. This allegory of defensive warfare is the last step on the road to a witch hunt around the festival. Jang Won-young, a member of the K-pop group Ive, posted “Happy Seollal” and was verbally attacked by Chinese fans for not saying ‘Chinese New Year’. On the other hand, Danielle Marsh, a Korean-Australian singer in the K-pop group NewJeans, was forced to make a profuse apology to Korean fans on Instagram after she asked them about ‘Chinese New Year’.
There is no simple answer to the question of which name is ‘correct’. It is in my opinion justifiable to call practices and traditions exclusive to China “Chinese”, but the same logic should also allow and respect other countries’ naming rights over their exclusive rituals and traditions related to the festival. The good news is that the Chinese government seems indifferent to the name. While the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. called it ‘Chinese New Year’, the state-affiliated media People’s Daily used ‘Lunar’ and ‘Chinese Lunar New Year’ interchangeably. At least considering the official position of the government, it is not a “war” over the New Year, yet.
In fact, not everyone fears ‘cultural invasion’. Actress Tang Wei and novelist Yu Hua are greatly appreciated in Korea. Another historic lesson is that the Chinese calendar – from which most East Asian calendars were derived – was finalised around the 17th century with extensive input from Jesuit missionaries and their then-modern knowledge of Copernican, Galilean, and Keplerian astronomy.
The issue with the cultural war is that it obstructs cultural exchange. After South Korea’s triumphant democratisation in the 1980s, Kim Dae-jung, the respectable President and Nobel laureate, decided against fierce opposition to liberalise importing Japanese cultural products, such as J-pop and anime. He insisted on people’s right to have more choices in entertainment, and asked the Koreans not to be afraid; overcoming the perturbation surrounding another episode of Japanese ‘cultural colonialism. Korea’s flourishing cultural industry today proves him right; that diversity and cultural commingling doesn’t kill our culture, but only makes it better.
