 The controversial debate rages on this year. Should you call it Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year? Who knows? Maybe by the end of this video, we come to a solution. Yeah. Well, you know the truth is, it probably depends. But guess what? The debate rages on every single February on Reddit. Andrew, this time it was framed in the sense of Sinophobia. Let's look at the viral post. It says people are trying to erase the phrase Chinese New Year. Let's run the clip in question. Even during Chinese New Year, the biggest holiday for Chinese people, Chinese New Year, when we see each other during Chinese New Year, the way we greet each other is we say, 恭喜發財 or 恭喜發財 in Cantonese. I'm sure you've heard that, at least prohibitively, right? 恭喜發財,恭喜發財. 恭喜發財 means hope you get rich. That's not happy New Year. Do you understand the go-to phrase? During Chinese New Year isn't, hey, happy New Year. It's, yo, hope you get rich. Hope you get rich. Hope you get richer than all these other motherfuckers. Hope you get so fucking rich, man. Hope you get rich and also hope you better hope I get rich. We got hope each other, both get rich together. Oh my goodness, Andrew. Ronnie Malaysian Chinese always sparking it up. I mean, long story short, Andrew, this naming thing has become a proxy war for a lot more than just the name, right? Yeah, it's definitely fueled by geopolitical beefs and things that are going on over in the motherland country because this is a traditional holiday that comes from Asia, comes from China originally, but obviously we understand a lot of different cultures. They do celebrate it, but with their own twist. Right, specifically what? Vietnamese and South Koreans are probably the next two biggest, right? Right, right, right. And then obviously a lot of Chinese overseas in like Malaysia, Indonesia, but they'll probably call it Chinese New Year. 50-50, I don't know. Hey, shout out to Ted, shout out to Salil, Chuck McNamoy. David, David, it's not Ted, it's Dut. Right, Dut and Salil, which is Sehebo Marabarecio. So I think my overall taken, I get that people debate this all the time because there's all these comments that are like, no, it's not Chinese New Year or no, I don't care. I'm not gonna call it Lunar New Year. I'm calling it Chinese New Year. That's where it came from. So I guess like both people are right. It's obviously that it's not, you can't say that it's not Chinese New Year because it is, but it's also other things as well, you know? So we are gonna get into the weeds of it, guys. Make sure you like, subscribe, and turn on your notifications, but you know what is not controversial? Smala sauce, check it out, almost sold out. Please get yours right now. All right, back to the proxy war thing, Andrew. People are trying to separate always from the ancient Sinosphere, right? We'll just pop up a map. China was incredibly influential in the ancient days. Still influential to this day, but now there's a lot of modern-day geopolitical beef, and there's only one word for Chinese. There's no ancient Chinese civilization word, modern word, CCP word, Chinese, Malaysian word. It's all just Chinese and China. There's only one word. I guess we're not calling it Han New Year. I don't think that would be any more helpful. In Malaysia, they call it Hua Ren Xin Yan, so they have some Hua Ren. Everybody's got to learn Mandarin and know what Hua Ren is. David, I kind of look at it like fried rice or egg rolls. I think pretty much everybody understands that those things originated from China, and it's not wrong to call those things Chinese, but the Filipino lumpia and the Vietnamese jazzo are by all means, to me, superior egg rolls, even though the basis of it comes from China. Yeah, I would say they taste better than... And everybody has their own fried rice. It seems like the egg fried rice originated from China, but Koreans do kimchi fried rice, which is delicious. Vietnamese have theirs. Malaysian have their Indonesian fried rice is delicious, but it probably stems from originally Chinese. Now, not to say that you have to call it Chinese fried rice every time or Chinese egg rolls. I don't think you have to. So I guess that's kind of like sort of how I'm looking at it nowadays, you know what I mean? Right. I think that it is true though, Andrew, that although there's all these things that it's so complicated, you could argue the history, the etymology, or the root of things, the company's probably more so catered to Chinese New Year, right? Yeah, so I think this is where... This is actually a pain point for a lot of like, I would just say Vietnamese people are Korean, people who celebrate. I think it's a pain point because when the companies are trying to sell something, when Lululemon wants to sell something, when Godiva wants to sell something, when all these Gucci LV brands want to come out with their... Like half the consumer brands have some Lunar New Year collection, but it doesn't, it looks very Chinese, right? When Hennessy throws big parties for Lunar New Year, they, I believe most of the time, call it Chinese New Year. They'll say Chinese because that's the market with the biggest purchasing power. And here's the thing, if you don't call it Chinese New Year, some of the big Chinese, I guess rich Chinese people won't like it because they'll be like, well, why are you calling it Lunar New Year? Just call it Chinese New Year. But I've been noticing that brands in the past three years, or let's be honest, post-Ovid, post-Ovid-19 have been more, they've been more going with Lunar New Year because, and this is what I think the original OP was referring to was the Sinophobia from Ovid-19 mixed with the geopolitical beef, mixed with the people trying to separate themselves from the ancient Sinosphere. It's just, they feel like it's a lot of persecution. You're saying due to the fact that Chinese or China is not any more liked or cooler in the past five years, so therefore more people are gonna be rolling with the, I guess the anti-Chinese way of saying the New Year, which is Lunar New Year. Right, right, right, like we said, the West in general has soured relationships with China. I mean, at least friend of me, but probably increased on the rivalry enemy side, right? Other Asian souring relations with China specifically disputes over the South China Sea and people feeling like China is just becoming too powerful, so it's okay to punch them, right? It's kind of like Christmas when people started calling an ex-miss, I remember at church they were like, no, they're trying to delete the Christianity out of it. This is the Asian church, by the way, right? Yeah, they're like, no, they're trying to take out the Christ out of Christmas. Don't let them do that, don't call it ex-miss. If you're Christian, you gotta call it Christmas, right? And so I guess it's kind of one of those, I guess it's one of those situations, but I will also say it definitely, yeah, I guess it's interesting. So who's caught up in this, Andrew? Chinese, Southeast Asians who really have a lot of ancient Southern Chinese culture but absolutely zero relation to the modern government, they're like living as Chinese in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and they're just like, yeah, but I'm Chinese. What's wrong with so wrong with that? I have nothing to do with that. So that confusing, right? But then that's also the whole thing of Chinese versus China, right? There's no other words, right? There's Chinese versus China. There's no like you, Chinese actually does not equal China, which is the interesting part because Chinese people are all over the world. But it could equal China. It could, but it doesn't necessarily, you know? ABCs who have no clue what's going on overseas in Asia, in general, they're like, wait, why am I, is it okay for me to say it? I'm just like familiar with my second, third, fourth gen upbringing. Mainland Chinese who want to be proud underneath attack and they're engaging in the proxy wars, identarian proxy wars with like Vietnamese or Korean people. I would say it's not that serious ultimately, but I feel like some people were even saying like, if you correct me on me calling it Chinese New Year, I'll cut you out of my life. Wow. So it is serious. Well, David, we're going to get into the comments section, but you guys want to know one little funny fact and I don't know if this really matters, but it's technically not even Lunar New Year. It's technically not Lunar New Year. Because if you base it off the moon, then it gets a little bit wacky, right? It's Lunar Solar, Lunar Solar New Year. It's a hybrid calendar. It's actually technically, if we want to get technical, it's the Lunar Solar calendar. Yo, why don't we call it Lunar Solar New Year? That is the most scientifically accurate term. Lunar New Year is not accurate because there's actually multiple Lunar New Years that people celebrate. Right, from the Middle East and stuff like that. Yeah, it's Lunar Solar. Lunar Solar New Year. See, man, we don't even need that. Guys, that's the solution. It's not Lunar New Year. We got it all wrong. Let's get into some interesting comments. Somebody was saying, and this is true, I looked this up, five years ago, if you typed happy Chinese New Year into iMessage around this time, only Chinese New Year would trigger the animation. But nowadays, Lunar New Year and Chinese New Year trigger that iMessage firework celebration. Doesn't that go to show you things have changed in the past five years? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, there's people arguing it is Lunar New Year. I mean, I think that, you know, especially a lot of Vietnamese people, they feel very passionate about this right now. There's a lot of beef going on right now over waters. Yes. But then a lot of people going back and forth, being like, hey, why don't I just call it what I want to call it and then you call it what you want to call it. I don't think this is wrong. I mean, listen, everybody knows what you're referring to. If Vietnamese people want to say, hey, you know, I don't exactly celebrate Chinese New Year. I celebrate that. I'm like, yeah, because you guys have your own customs that are a little bit different. Now, the zodiac is similar, but you guys have slightly different animals. One animal's different, though. Yeah, a couple of animals are different. And then you do things a little bit differently. You guys eat different food because you're Vietnamese and you're eating Vietnamese food. So that's cool. So I'm like, that's fine. But don't, it's not not Chinese New Year. You know what I mean? Right, right, right. Somebody said it's not the antithesis. It's being inclusive. Sorry, you basically think that it's Sinophobia and not done for inclusivity reasons. It totally is. So the truth is some people don't want you to call it Chinese New Year for Sinophobic reasons, but a lot of people just want you to call it it for inclusive reasons. And that goes back to your ex-miss versus Christmas versus winter solstice versus winter holidays point. Wow, wow, wow. David, this comment, though, brings up another point. A possible new solution, guys. Read this comment. Actually, as a Chinese, I don't know where this Chinese New Year versus Lunar New Year thing is coming from. In China, people actually call it the Spring Festival. Chuanjie, right? So if we just call it Chuanjie, well, not in Chinese, but if we called it Spring Festival in English. Ooh, Asian Spring Festival. Asian Spring Festival, is that wrong? That's technically accurate. But then not all Asians celebrate Spring Festival. It is true. By the way, guys, don't get offended. It's countries that used to be part of the ancient Sinosphere. But Spring Festival, if you celebrate the Asian Spring Festival, unless the Asian Spring Festival means something different in like the Philippines or Cambodia or something. You know what I mean? Thailand has their own Spring Festival. Eastern Spring Festival. Lunar Solar Spring Festival. Oh, my God. Lunar Solar Spring Festival. Yeah. But hey, Cambodians, Khmer, they have their own New Year. I believe it is their own. They definitely own that one. This guy said, I see both sides, guys. Let's just keep the context in mind. If you're talking to other Chinese people, you can call it Chinese New Year. But then when you're talking to everybody else, call it Lunar Lunar New Year for the sake of inclusivity. But you know, even within Chinese, sometimes it gets complicated. Andrew, if you say like Xinyan Kuala to a Cantonese person, they're just like, why didn't you just say Sunning? And you're just like, listen, man, you know, there's just so much like inter-beasts. How do you share something? How can everybody just share the new year? You know what? You know, at this point about taking the context and the audience in mind, it's actually super logical if everybody was neutral and unemotional about this issue. But people are emotional and not super neutral on this issue. How about people just not be so emotional about this? Right. Somebody said that there's a difference between Western Sinophobia and just inter-Asian beef. That is true. I agree with that. Yeah, it's not necessarily Sinophobia in the same way because that's putting it on a Western lens. It's kind of like, it's just like rivalry, competition. There is some, I think you can be an Asian and still be Sinophobic in a different way. I think it's possible, but yeah. It's complicated within Asians. I mean, I think I see some, you just see a variance across the board, but it's definitely a fraction. Yeah. Ultimately, this person said, you know, I'm part Chinese myself, but I'm part Lao, I'm part Vietnamese, I'm part Malaya, I have people in my family that are Korean. It's so interesting. It's like a circle. People want to be more inclusive, but then in the course of acknowledging the diversity of our community, we end up being seen as a monolith again and eliminating all the nuance, Mongolian New Year, Tetsulol, Chinese New Year and then it just all becomes Lunar New Year because actually Mongolians have one called the, I'm sorry, I'm going to mess up the pronunciation, sang, sang, sorry. So I'm saying that basically it's so confusing because China was so influential in the past, but it's so hated in some ways in modern day. So when you're dealing with the ancient past and then this modern day and then like all these layers in between everybody's tapped into a different layer. All right, I got this. I got a solution. I got a solution, David. I have a solution to all this. Chinese government and just like all the rich Chinese people, they hire a bunch of Koreans to rebrand and make Chinese New Year cooler so that people don't hate it as much. Ha, ha, ha. It makes sense because Koreans got the branding game on lock. So you got to go hire them as consultants. Right. I was talking about like how Chris Wu and Jackson Wang were like trained in Korea. You have to train the Chinese New Year in Korea to bring it back to China so that everybody can enjoy it. Oh, and then you hire Japanese designers to do the aesthetic pack to redo the aesthetic pack so it doesn't look so ancient. And then you get viets to throw the nightclub, the club nuts. David, David, how do you feel about it? What's your solution? What's your personal? How are you going about life and calling it? Because we talk to all different types of Asians. We know I have a lot of viet friends. Right, right, right. For me, man, if somebody wants to make it a big deal, I'll just call it a Lunar New Year because I'm just not even trying to make it a thing. You know what I mean? But like, I could see the Chinese for that. I can see the Chinese perspective where it's like, man, we created it and we created that calendar and we created the Zodiac and then we can't even get credit for it in the West because everybody thinks we're whack and we're not cool or we're like the ancient grandma that like got excommunicated from the, you know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? Like where it's almost like you're so influential but then you're taught to kind of like downplay yourself because you're not cool. Yeah. Whereas everybody else can upplay themselves because they're a smaller group and then, but it's like, are we supposed to downplay ourselves like in the way that like Anglo-Saxons or like, I guess, prior to that Greek people or Roman people dominated the Western civilization but then they can't be, say it anymore either but I don't think we ever we're in that position that like where like Anglo people have to downplay themselves. You know what I mean? With the Christmas and the Xmas. It's, it is confusing because everybody perceives like I said, there's so many hyper there's so many layers of this argument and everybody's tapped into a different geometric plane and they don't really intersect. It's almost like, you know what I mean? Like you could be just tapped into like it seems super unfair for the Chinese kid not to be able to call it Chinese New Year but everybody could call it Vietnamese Korean New Year in a micro but in a macro sense everybody else the inclusive argument makes a lot more sense. Yeah. So it depends on like, I guess like your scope and your focal length that you're viewing the issue at or like, what is your goal? So I don't know. I just think these things they always exist. Andrew, Andrew, did you know there's a big fight right now? Is Yonis Greek or Nigerian? Yonis onto the Kumball. Yeah. Is he Greek or Nigerian? If you look in the Instagram comments let me tell you there's no agreement on who gets to take credit for how great of a basketball classic like people look at us and be like, oh, you guys are just American just like everybody else. And we're like, I don't know. Right. The French national players. Is that a is that a win for Africa or is that a win for France? France wins the World Cup but all the players are from Africa. It's hard to simplify things nowadays for me. I think that I'll be cognizant about the audience that I'm speaking to. But at the end of the day the way I celebrate it I celebrate Chinese New Year like we will say it in Chinese like I'm Lunar New Year in a way it is all inclusive term so I'll use it but it doesn't fully mean anything to me because it's like what is Lunar New Year? It's a more generalized term. Is it the red packets? That's fine. But does the red packets say Chinese or Vietnamese on it or does it say English on it or does it not have any words on it? You know what I mean? Right. Is the Hongbao like, you know so I celebrate Chinese New Year but obviously I'm not going to tell Vietnamese people that they celebrate Chinese New Year. They celebrate 10 because it's a little different. Right. And I'll just say hey it's a similar thing. You guys understand like whatever it's similar fried rice this from China but it's everybody has their own version. Right. I like the I like Korean fried rice better maybe you know what I mean? Like whatever but I think I think I'll say Chinese New Year but if anybody and no one can tell me I'm wrong for that but I'm not going to tell them to say it either. I'm not going to be like yo Koreans you celebrate in Chinese New Year I'm like nah you're doing your thing. It's kind of weird that Asians get caught up in this English nomenclature like point scoring for like identity points or like contribution points or something. It's so weird but it is we are all living in the West. I would I think all Chinese people I don't even say Chinese New Year to other Chinese people I say like Sun-Nin Phyloch or Sun-Nin Phyloch. I say it in Chinese even to other ABCs which is even a little weird for me right but like I mean like it seems like a little bit more rare to do that but it's like I just don't it doesn't even make any sense to me to say happy Chinese New Year to another Chinese person in English. Yeah. Yeah, I do think people who make this a big deal are they're definitely have some other deep rooted feelings about Chinese that's not like if you get pissed about it then you feel offended by like just Chinese culture in general or Chinese people or China in general you know but taking it out of that I don't think it's a big deal so I'll say Chinese New Year I'm not going to correct you I'm not going to be like no, no, no, no. Remember it's Chinese New Year but also if you tell me hey, don't call it Chinese New Year I'll be like well, I mean I can call it what I want and I can that is also an accurate description of it so like we said I mean everything in 2024 Andrew with magnetism with gravity it is getting jujitsu'd or judo'd to push other people's agendas or like you said deeper but you know what's even a more tight-knit Asian thing to do is to be an Asian on Asian and be like yo, you celebrate New Year and it's February and then you just know it just say New Year you just know you just know hey, hey just say New Year hey, hey Kwak Hoa you celebrate the New Year how's your New Year and it's like February and you don't already know it's that New Year it's kind of fire that's kind of fire because that's how you know if you just dab each other I would say Happy New Year you don't even got to say Lunar New Year you don't say mean none of that and you go up to Korean, Japanese even I mean I know a lot of Japanese people don't celebrate it yeah, yeah but even if I just go to they'll get it get it just that's the insider thing is New Year's in February alright so say Happy New Year to all your Asian friends in February and you don't even qualify it with no Gregorian versus Lunar Solar qualifications or anything just say Happy New Year mid-February alright you guys let us know what you think in the comment section below until next time we're gonna hop on boys we out peace