Lunar New Year starts on February 1, 2022, marking the start of the Year of the Tiger. In communities across New York City, people are gathering (virtually and in-person) with family and loved ones to honor their ancestors and wish for luck, health, and prosperity in the new year.

With crowds bustling to buy new years ingredients and red lanterns strung up in streets and storefronts, New York’s Chinatowns in Manhattan; Flushing, Queens; and Sunset Park, Brooklyn are some of the liveliest places to experience Lunar New Year festivities and traditions. Check out Open House New York’s recommendations below to learn more about some of the people and places that define the diverse Asian diasporas in New York celebrating Lunar New Year.

After your virtual or in-person exploration of Chinatowns through the month of February, stay tuned in early March for an OHNY panel discussion with leaders from Chinatown’s business and arts communities as they reflect on post-COVID recovery, resilience, and reopening in Chinatown.

From all of us at Open House New York, we wish our neighbors and friends luck in the Year of the Tiger!

Explore

• Embark on a virtual walking tour of Chinatown with the New York Times’ Michael Kimmelman
• Shop for Lunar New Year gifts and ingredients with Welcome to Chinatown’s gift-giving and food & drink shopping guides
• Celebrate with Flushing Town Hall’s art exhibition, film festival, and global music concert
• Go back in time with Think!Chinatown and Urban Archive’s Shopfronts of Chinatown collection of historical photographs showing the diverse businesses, architecture, and communities that have been in the neighborhood over the last two centuries
• Feast on a dizzying array of dishes at the food courts of the Golden Shopping Mall and New World Mall in Flushing and the newly-opened Mott Street Eatery in Manhattan
• Watch or march in the Lunar New Year Parades in Flushing on February 5 with the Greater Flushing Chamber of Commerce and in Manhattan on February 12 with Better Chinatown
• Through February 6, join the Long Island City Partnership for the neighborhood’s first ever Lunar New Year celebration with local businesses, organizations, and cultural institutions in New York City’s fastest-growing Asian community

Listen

• Listen to Think!Chinatown’s Landmarks, an audio exploration and photo journal of personal landmarks from Chinatown community members
• Listen to the Brooklyn History Project and Museum of Chinese in America’s oral histories of Sunset Park residents who immigrated in the 1990’s to the stretch of 8th Avenue now known as Brooklyn’s Chinatown
• Listen to the Queens Public Library’s Memories of Migration podcast series to hear stories of migration in the world’s borough

Watch

• Get to know the Chinese diaspora of Chinatown through their experiences shopping for everyday kitchen ingredients with Think!Chinatown’s Chinatown Shopping video series
• Learn the stories of Chinatown community members impacted by coronavirus in Grace Young’s video interview series for Poster House
• Watch Chinese dance and music performances in the China Institute’s free Chinese New Year online variety show on February 8
• Get a virtual taste of Chinatown’s Dim Sum Palace with chef Akiko Thurnauer and Wellington Chen, Executive Director of the Chinatown Partnership/BID