Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
Hello everybody and welcome to a very special Spring Festival edition of Roundtable.
I'm He Young, coming to you from Beijing.
And today we're diving into the vibrant celebrations of the Chinese New Year from across the globe, especially how the joy of Chinese New Year is spread across the United Kingdom.
Joining me today are two incredible guests.
We have Josh Leung, who has been organizing Chinese New Year events in Lancaster, UK for years, bringing the spirit of the festival to the local community.
And we also have John Wardle, a talented musician from Liverpool, who's been adding his fusion sound to the celebrations.
Welcome, gentlemen.
Hey, it's great to have you on the show.
I'm excited to hear how you're creating meaningful experiences and cultural exchanges during this festive season.
So let's jump right into it and explore how this global celebration is bringing people together.
So guys, how do you each personally understand and celebrate the Chinese New Year?
And both of you are living overseas outside of China.
I bet that experience is different so let's go to you first John because I've always been outside of China probably celebrate it in a different way but for us it's always try to get time to see family things like that I think because I'm coming from a family of musicians like everyone in the family
is doing music or something and my mom said even when she was growing up in China because both my grandparents were involved in that she said she'd spend Chinese New Year with her grandma uncles and stuff like that but my granddad grandma would always be out performing sort of all around that time and they'd
be busy so with us we try to fit in whenever we can but if we can't especially if the actual Chinese New Year day is on a weekend because there's always a show or something going on we end up either celebrating together as a family week before or week after.
Wow what does the Chinese New Year mean to you?
I think because we're here it's a way of identifying with our culture because we're so far away from China but in a way we're grateful that we can do shows.
I'm doing fusion music now but Chinese New Year always ends up giving a few opportunities to play traditional music with my brother and we always enjoy doing a bit of traditional here and there as well.
Growing up I probably should have mentioned that before because we learned music, the traditional Chinese stuff from my granddad.
He had a youth orchestra in Liverpool and we'd sort of every Chinese New Year we'd go and play traditional stuff there with the rest of the other Chinese kids growing up here and what about for you josh how do you celebrate the chinese new year in lancaster and what does the festival mean to you okay
so uh we celebrate chinese new year through doing some like festival events uh back in the days before us like lancaster has um not much to do for chinese new year so we decided to organize in the festival ourselves to celebrate friends, family, and everyone in Lancaster.
So yeah, we are doing quite a lot, which I will share in the interview later on.
And just for personally, with me and my friends, on the official Chinese New Year date, we usually just have some hot pot together.
Yeah, to just like have some time together to share the moment.
Yes, and Lancaster is a historic city in the northwest part of England, right?
To enjoy some of these Chinese celebrations with all these activities with the Chinese theme, then that would be pretty rare.
Am I correct in saying that?
Is Chinese New Year the time to sort of showcase your heritage in that sense?
Yes, it is. As you mentioned, Lancaster is quite a historical place, traditionally, even before the War of the Roses, it's well -known.
To sharing the Chinese culture, to start off, it was a bit weird.
But through the years, we decorated the city with the big lanterns.
We sent free decorations to businesses.
Everyone is just stuck coming together to see the Lions and Dragons Parade during the new year.
Oh, right. So you mentioned the lion dance, right?
Yeah, the lion's dance.
Yes, we have some professionals like martial arts lovers, like the kung fu lovers.
They are actually from the UK, born and some of them went to China to learn the kung fu.
They are now living in Blackburn, a small city in Lancashire, and they keep practicing kung fu and martial arts.
They keep doing the lion's dances for us every year, and the lion's parade in the city center as well.
John, you grew up in Liverpool.
So I was born in London, more so grew up half between Liverpool, half between Manchester.
Right. Liverpool certainly is a bustling port city in northwest England.
And it's the birthplace of the Beatles, right?
I wonder if you see these Chinese music celebrations for this festive period as well.
Yeah, I think because it's quite a musical city.
And I think it's the oldest Chinatown or something in the UK as well, Liverpool.
So there's always been links for that.
And I think with the youth orchestra since the 80s, they would have been introducing people to traditional Chinese music as well at a grassroots level.
I think because of the music history with the city, people are open to come in and seeing whether it's traditional or fusion.
I mean, of course, you're not going to get hundreds of thousands, millions of people coming, but there is a respectable large amount of people interested in coming to see it.
And I think because of the way Liverpool is, everyone takes pride.
So even though it's a Chinese youth orchestra based in Liverpool, a lot of the community very much see it as a part of Liverpool.
Yes, indeed. When I was studying in London, I remember there was this massive lion dance parade and certainly all kinds of activities of celebrating like with the Chinese music concerts and other activities going on in the city when it's the Chinese New Year celebrations.
And it's a really great feeling that you can sense all these things that remind you of your own heritage.
And I wonder what's the most memorable Chinese New Year experience for you?
So for me, it's actually like when I was a child, when I was still back in Hong Kong, I was spending it with my family.
I still remember like the day before the Chinese New Year with my whole big family, like all the cousins, all the uncles, those like grandparents, we having dinners together.
And then just enjoy the moment to like sharing with everyone, like some of them, you just really see them once a year.
And also after that, me and my family also go to the flower markets.
It's quite a big thing in Hong Kong.
It's very crowded. We just enjoy the most as a family activities every year.
Yeah, in our Chinese culture, really very much revolves around the concept of family, and especially when it's the Chinese New Year.
John, you had something to say here?
Yeah, I was just going to say, I mean, growing up, we'd always done the traditional stuff.
Both me and my brother were always interested in doing a bit of fusion and how we could do it.
And there was one year, I think it was the first year they were doing a light show as part of Chinese New Year in Liverpool.
We did like a fusion piece sort of leaning a bit more towards hip hop and MC Jin actually ended up rapping over the song that we did and then it was played during the light show in Liverpool.
Wow, that's amazing.
Yeah, that ended up being the most memorable.
Well, I'm obviously a amateur, but I'm a music lover.
And yeah, I tend to think that with the Chinese sounds, you kind of know what to expect.
But you're absolutely right.
The music, even if it's been labeled more or less Chinese, it's got so many different elements to it.
And it's constantly evolving too.
but it's so fascinating with the lens that you've adopted that is to look at everything knowing it's fusion yeah that's just really interesting to me yeah even when you listen to the chinese stuff if you find some of the older like what was i forgot the name of the song is it guqin is it joe kuang or something
like the first written music but you can hear that type of stuff and then you compare it to the traditional stuff you're hearing from 1700s 1800s compare that to the sort of turn of the century to the traditional stuff that was coming out in the 70s you can always hear little influences slipping in and out
with the Chinese like the traditional Chinese and it's just we've always found that interesting and how we can mix it in other ways and then also when you go to different provinces and different regions how madly different the music can be we've always found very interesting absolutely I listened to
one of your songs or the pieces of music that you have come up with.
And I was truly mesmerized by it, that track called Incantation.
Thank you. It was just such a great joy listening to it.
And I could definitely pick up these Mongolian, is it called throat singing?
I'm not sure. And I'd like to check with you.
But it was just so cool to hear these really contemporary vibes to it.
And then suddenly you hear this really deep singing of Mongolian roots.
Is this just one of the many examples when you're infusing all these different elements of music and certainly things that remind us of China?
Yeah, me and my brother are always slightly biased towards the Mongolian thing because my grandma's family is actually from Mongolia, and then moved down to Guangzhou like years ago, but they were Mongolian so we always slightly sort of always a bit biased even though my granddad taught us traditional
Cantonese music we always sort of leaning towards a Mongolian sound and in particular we found Mongolian even some of the Xinjiang sounds and that really when you're trying to fuse them together with different whether it's jazz or rock or even hip -hop it tends to blend a bit better and it's still got
that sort of Chinese sound as well so yeah I think we'll always lean towards more of the Mongolian stuff.
It's so interesting how our roots manifest themselves in what we do.
And your endeavor here is shown up in the best way possible.
As someone who appreciates music, it's just so much fun listening to the work that you've put out.
Sometimes I really envy you artists, you managed to do that.
And I know for you, John, you are going to be performing at this year's Chinese New Year's event in Lancaster.
Josh, tell us about what are the highlights we can anticipate for this year's celebrations in Lancaster?
So for this year, you can expect for two main events.
Now, Lancaster is full of the traditional Chinese lanterns already.
we have put up more than 600 of the big traditional red lanterns across the city center in Lancaster Grand Theater.
There will be a Chinese cultural variety show and join and other performances will be in the two performing, traditional shans, music, danxing, Beijing opera at Kwanju.
Also there will be another date, there will be an outdoor carnivores And on that day, there will be an Alliance Parade, Alliance Dance and Dragon Parade across the city centre as well.
Usually on that day, like everyone is coming out to see the Dragon Alliance, especially.
Yeah, apart from these two parades, there are more performances like traditional Chinese dance, like more music performances, magic and singing as well.
And also there are some free workshops for everyone to join those workshops, including Chinese paper cutting.
And this year we are working with Wei Hai with their special cutting style.
Also like some Chinese writing as well.
Oh, you mean like calligraphy?
Yes, Chinese calligraphy.
Yeah. So you have these workshops where the local residents can actually get their hands dirty in learning how to truly get involved with these traditions that, well, in China, we kind of take them for granted because that's part of the festival.
Yes. Plus we found that as well.
So in the first year, we only have the paper cutting and the Chinese canography.
But like at On we have some more like Chinese costume, like photo booth.
People can put on the Chinese costume to try it.
We put in the small lions and dance puppets.
And people can try on it.
And then we really want to share it with everyone in Lancaster and in the UK as well.
more experience rather than just like people come and just see someone like performing and go.
We want to make sure everyone enjoying the festival.
We want to make sure everyone is experiencing the festival by something they do because we clearly know that they will last in the memory for longest.
Indeed. Josh, what's prompted you to become an organizer for these chinese new year's events so it was like four years ago it was during the lockdown in the uk and then me and my team is actually like i'm thinking um what should we do to um to make um the places more like happy like and then we can also like
share our culture um because like everyone was very depressed and stressed at the time and then when the chinese new year was coming in few months and then we're actually planning to um to share this culture with everyone because one of the biggest goals or meaning for chinese new year is about celebration and reunion and i
think at that time everyone needs that so we started that like four years ago and then the reason we keep doing it is because like after the first year and we have done it and then actually like so many like British -born Chinese and other Asians people are even like they're from Thai or Vietnam this they
come to us they say thank you to us and they say thank you for us for doing it because they haven't celebrated in the UK for maybe for years or even some of the British -born Chinese told us like when it was younger they celebrated with the family but like someone was like um or some some kids was like
serotyping them or racist them saying oh why are you doing it or just like make it as a fun so um so like after we hearing it i think like what doing is quite meaningful at least like for um for some people and then we're just trying to keep this tradition going and to make sure like um we can share this culture
and also celebrating with everyone with all the background, from the cultural background, from the race background, or the location where they're from, we can still celebrate and then we can still share this culture together.
Yeah, isn't that a lovely sentiment that yes, this is a Chinese holiday, but it's something that everybody can enjoy.
And it's great to get everybody together as well.
Really just learn a little bit more about other cultures considering where you guys are at.
And John, you're going to be performing.
And this is not the first time you're taking part in the performance of the Chinese New Year in Lancaster.
So have you ever had a moment when your music or performance really helped people from different backgrounds to connect during the celebration?
Yeah, we've played Lancaster a few, like Josh was saying before, it's a historical city.
We was there for the Lancaster Music Festival as well earlier in sort of October time, I think.
It surprised both me and my brother how open Lancaster is as a city towards a lot of the world music and fusion stuff.
And you can see when you're playing that type of stuff because some of it can be a bit out there and of course not everyone's going to enjoy it.
but when when we're playing those sort of places it's the connection and you can see the engagement with people they're just watching you absolutely focused and then after they'll come and talk to about it and can talk to you in depth about what you were doing what they how they understand it what was going
on and I think it's it is very that I think in that way it does really make you realize how what you're doing can connect with people in different ways but even we played netherlands a couple years ago at some at a festival and it was like very sort of multicultural lots of different people there and the engagement
we'd get from different people coming in and a few people spoke to us after a little bit from different backgrounds whether sort of some middle eastern north african and they even what they were saying is they could find similarities with the way we were fusing some of the chinese sounds so the music
that their parents would have shown them growing up and the folk music from their countries growing up and it's oh we always it's always very special when people can but in a way that's what you get with music but people can find something to latch on to with it and it's yeah that's where you're connecting
you can see the connection happening and once the audience is engaged the set's always going to be a lot better music has such a powerful force of bringing people together and especially for you musicians and artists coming together and share these reflections that is a really beautiful thing in itself.
Josh, you're helping introducing Chinese New Year celebrations to a wider audience.
How do you think these cultural exchanges help people appreciate Chinese traditions maybe in a deeper way?
What's the most surprising thing you've learned about the community's response?
For me, I was surprised how open they accept the Chinese culture, especially when we're doing the lions and dragons parade is actually it's all around the city um if you if you don't like it people may think oh like initially i thought some people may dislike it i think oh like you're blocking the road
and everything but um it was very positive like everyone was so loved it like everyone even the kids and they want to touch the lions and like and they want to like take photos with them they want to just follow the lions and dragon apparate around the city um i was surprised i was surprised how um
how openness like people like the chinese culture and also some of them they they they really love the chinese food um because on that day like we have some um stores like we're working with some like local chinese restaurants they have done some um traditional like chinese uh festival food like fried
rice fried noodles and some of the um like festival cakes as well and they just love it some of them have never tried those like festival cakes before but at the new year cakes um but they just love it they just love the taste they just love um how they're presenting it and they just love the culture
as well. So I was surprised how they love and how they would like to celebrate with us.
Yeah, everybody join in.
And it's now or never.
Well, actually next year as well.
But it's a fantastic opportunity for people to experience new parts of the culture.
How do you think these celebrations can help foster cross cultural understanding in the UK and beyond?
you're showing your culture to different people that maybe don't even necessarily even know it exists and it's sort of showing people that you're there in a way it's showing people you're very much a part of the community as well giving people something to do and it's um yeah you're engaging in that way
with other people you're introducing them and showing them your culture and it's uh always I mean racism's coming from not a lack of understanding when you're doing these things you're helping people understand your culture introducing them to it and I think in a way as well because Chinese culture generally
is so centered around food if you're giving people good food they're going to come back and I am in that way it's going to sort of open up to everyone bring more people in raise awareness in a way and end up helping communities come together and engage and join in with each other and things like that.
Yeah the CCTV spring festival gala is a huge tradition for many in China have you ever watched it what are your thoughts on this pretty iconic show Josh why don't you go first and then John sure sure so yes I watched it with my friends and family like I still remember the first time I watched it I think
it's like five six years ago when I was still like in the UK at high school we celebrated together with some of our classmates we just watched it together yeah it was lovely and then the show I remember the most is actually from last year or the year before a special drumming sessions like the German performances
like the passion the ways they do it is just inspiring me a lot and I just love it so much great what about you John yeah well my grandparents only channel they had was CCTV somehow and my granddad used to tape any sort of performance he felt was relevant or me and my brother might like or if it was a song
we were learning and anybody oh this is how they play it and he'd tape a lot of it onto the little video recorder we'd go around to his house it was just hundreds of tapes whether it was opera traditional music or I think sometimes even comedians I'm not sure but so we'd always watched CCTV in general
as well as the Chinese New Year stuff they'd tape it or my most memorable one is because growing up I was a massive journey to the West fan I used to love it that 1980s series or something someone brought the DVD of it back for my mum from China she gave it to me and my brother and we used to just sit
there and watch it all day over and over again it was I must have been very young but the guy that acted as the actual monkey on it come back I think it was year of the monkey and he'd come back and done like a performance and there was loads of them like seemed like hundreds of like monkeys jumping
around doing all like that sort of opera acrobatics and stuff and I remember as a kid I thought that was amazing and then yeah probably more recently I think it was 2016 when they were filming all the um you know like they'd go to the different regions throughout the program to show what they were doing
and when it got to mongolia it just started they were in like the mongolian tent everyone sort of singing and dancing and i remember that straight away it caught my attention but the bit with that that really i was like oh that's amazing was when they took the camera outside thick snow everywhere and they're
all riding on horses doing all those mad skills like hanging off the edge of it and stuff uh grabbing the scarves and that riding up and down like as fast as you can probably go and fireworks going off everywhere and I think that for me was probably quite like a memorable thing I remember watching that with my
mom and I just think I thought I thought was amazing I remember really enjoying watching those segments yeah and also Monkey King I was one of those kids possibly just like you you know watching the Journey to the West it has to be the 1980s version right that's the one that's a legit one As we celebrate
the Chinese New Year, what message or wish would you like to share with our global audience, especially those who may be experiencing the festival for the first time?
Sure, it's to share the happiness moments, and then it's a good start of a year and a blessing for the year.
So I think like reunion and the celebrations is two main messages we should take in Chinese New Year Festival.
Wonderful. What about you, John?
Yeah, I think, again, reunion.
The Chinese New Year is always the most important.
But wherever you are, have a look if there's anything happening and enjoy the festivities, have fun and see what's going on.
Eat a lot of food. That's the best part.
One of the best parts.
A huge thank you to our wonderful guests, Josh Leung and John Wirtle.
Thank you for sharing your experiences and your passions for the Chinese New Year celebrations with us today.
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Thank you for inviting us.
Thank you. And to our listeners, may this new year bring you health, happiness, and meaningful connections, wherever you are in the world.
Wishing you all a very happy Chinese New Year.
