Dragon Time

“This year is the Year of the Rat,” declared Jessica Ng, standing next to her father James outside the Taipan Bakery on Main Street in Flushing. James, holding two boxes of sticky cakes - customary for the Chinese New Year - in one arm and Jessica’s hand in the other, beamed as his seven-year-old daughter waxed poetic on the celebrations that would soon unfold on the streets surrounding them.
On the Saturday, February 2, before the Lunar New Year’s celebration began on Thursday, February 7, Flushing was already transforming from a typically teeming neighborhood into the maelstrom of activity it will become when dragons, kung fu performances, family banquets and red envelopes stuffed with cash emerge as the ubiquitous symbols of another new beginning.
Shoppers fingered red paper ornaments dangling from the ceiling of Chung Hwa Book Co. on Roosevelt Avenue; they grabbed scarlet calendars and books by famous fortunetellers off variety store shelves. People pushing grocery carts down the aisles at the Hong Kong Supermarket - where there was a holiday special on oranges and cherries - did so under red paper lanterns that somehow remained motionless despite all the chaos below.
All the signs said it was crunch time, yet Mabel Law was smiling. The Flushing Business Improvement District Executive Director knows the New Year means business, both in literal and figurative terms.
“Restaurants and markets do very well this time of year,” she said, explaining that the New Year is a time for family and feasts, while noting the spike in other forms of spending and splurging, like on haircuts, clothing and even cleaning products.
Law said that New Year’s Eve - Wednesday, February 6 this year - is the time to clean the house.
“And when you’re done cleaning you take a broom, open the door and” - here she mimed sweeping - “it’s out with the bad, in with the good.”
Those who partake in the Lunar New Year festivities like to go out with a bang - literally in many cases, as firecrackers are a way to ward off evil, explained Peter Koo, a Chairman of this year’s parade.
At Gala Manor, a banquet hall on 37th Avenue near Main Street, business booms during the month-long celebration, especially on New Year’s Day, said Henry Tang, the manager of the restaurant’s administration department.
“It’s an important day to be together, therefore people are willing to spend much more,” Tang said, explaining that Gala Manor attracts customers not only because of the food but because it can hold parties of up to 80 and offers competitive prices.
While Gala’s food is always good, Tang said meals during the holiday should be special and “should be higher quality.”
Indeed, the Lunar New Year calls for some curious cuisine. Step through the doorway at Ginseng King on Main Street at the corner of 37th Avenue and the swirling mixture of aromas treats your nostrils like a speed punching bag. Shoppers pore over barrels heaping with exotic ingredients and textures that implore you to stick your hand in and investigate.
An employee pointed out the dried oysters, mushrooms and sea cucumbers, which were cooked and savored Wednesday evening at New Year’s Eve dinner tables across the globe.
Just a block away at Fa Guo Candy Shop USA, yet a world removed from the earthy and aquatic delicacies at Ginseng, patrons scoop up handfuls of New Year’s chocolates buried within gold plastic shells in the shape of dogs, roosters, coy fish and coins. And don’t forget the rats.
“I need $20 for chocolate rats,” Nancy Wolf called out as she darted past her husband David like a kid in a candy store. By her side was her eight-year-old son Robert who had come in from Westchester with Mom and Dad to meet his grandparents, Sandy and Harry Stein, of Long Island.
The Steins, not exactly of Asian descent, have been celebrating the Lunar New Year in the city for half a century, the latter half of which has been spent in Flushing.
Having retired from the crowded streets of Chinatown in Manhattan and the “bedlam” of the parade in Flushing, the Steins started a tradition of meeting the Wolfs for dim sum every Lunar New Year.
“It’s easier to get to Flushing and the food is just as good. Actually, the food is better,” exclaimed Sandy Stein, who said their favorite place in the area is Jade Asian Restaurant on 39th Avenue.
“We try to open our kid’s eyes to another culture,” explained David Wolf, waiting patiently until his wife and son returned, both of them grinning broadly, a bag stuffed with golden chocolate rodents in hand.
Meanwhile, at the Shaolin Temple Overseas Headquarters on 41st Avenue, a team of students practiced kung fu so that they could perfectly exemplify a slice of that culture at the Lunar New Year’s Parade on February 9. Led by Heng Zhen, a 23-year-old performance coach two and a half years out of the Shaolin Monastery in China, students rehearsed their choreographed movements and technique that has been carried down from generations.
“The stage is bigger at the parade,” Zhen said through an interpreter.
“It’s much more exciting in front of everybody. It’s for the community,” he explained, though he admitted the level of kung fu in America is not the same as it is in Hong Kong.
James Ng echoed Zhen’s nostalgia.
Asked what he and his family did to celebrate, Ng laughed: “Not much in America. The holiday isn’t as good as it is in Hong Kong.”
But precocious little Jessica wasn’t the least bit fazed.
“My teacher, Miss Nicoletta, she’s not Chinese but she knows about the New Year,” she said.
“A lot of people visit during the New Year. Family and friends give you money,” Jessica explained, doing her part at playing teacher.
And how far into the festivities would the Ngs’ sticky cakes last?
“We eat them over a period of two weeks,” James said, matter-of-factly before breaking into a grin.
“Okay, maybe one week. We might have to come back for more,” he said, conveying that sometimes certain things, if only small ones, never change.