When Chiang Mai Glows Red

Chinese New Year may arrive more quietly in Chiang Mai than in Asia’s great Chinatowns, but the city still glows red. Among incense, ancestral offerings, crowded food stalls and elusive dragons, I discover a celebration where Chinese traditions and northern Thai life meet – and where good fortune can be eaten, offered to the ancestors or tucked inside a red envelope.

A whole cooked chicken sits before the gods. Nearby, a family sets fire to a stack of banknotes. Nobody seems remotely concerned. It is Chinese New Year in Chiang Mai,  and prosperity, it seems, matters in this world and the next.

A few hours earlier, I arrive in Chinatown looking for dragons. Instead, I find red lanterns, incense smoke and a street completely occupied by scooters. The dragons, I assume, are trapped somewhere behind them. By late afternoon, the streets around Warorot Market have surrendered completely. Scooters are parked on pavements, squeezed into alleys and arranged in formations that suggest a military campaign conducted entirely on two wheels. I abandon any attempt to understand the parking system and continue on foot.

Above, red lanterns hang across the streets of Chinatown. Red couplets frame doorways, shopfronts glow with decorations, and the incense smoke drifts from the temple. As evening falls and the lanterns light up, this familiar corner of Chiang Mai begins to look as though it has changed countries without moving anywhere.

Chiang Mai’s celebration is smaller than those of Bangkok, Singapore or Hong Kong. It does not attempt to compete. Instead, it spills through the market streets in its own mixture of devotion, commerce, food and traffic confusion.

For days beforehand, I had watched the preparations. Chinese New Year requires food, decorations, firecrackers, gifts and new clothes. Markets multiply, shops fill with red objects, and everyone seems to remember – at precisely the same moment – that something essential has still not been bought.

There is also the cleaning. Houses are swept thoroughly before the New Year to remove the misfortunes of the old one. Once the New Year begins, however, the broom is best left alone: sweeping during the first days risks sending the newly arrived good luck straight back out of the door. It is a persuasive tradition. Few other celebrations can transform not cleaning the floor into an act of spiritual responsibility.

Relatives travel long distances to share the most important meal of the year, honour their ancestors and welcome a new beginning together. Out in the street, I join the less formal reunion taking place around the food stalls. There is fish, dumplings, spring rolls, glutinous rice cakes and sweet rice balls, alongside a generous selection of Thai dishes. Many foods carry auspicious meanings: prosperity, unity, longevity or wealth. This is useful information, because it allows me to approach dinner with a sense of moral purpose.

Vendors selling clothes, cosmetics and souvenirs have joined the food stalls. I am beginning to understand that good fortune may arrive through several channels, including a new handbag.

Inside the Chinese temple, the mood changes. I step from the noise of the market into air thick with incense, candlelight and quiet concentration. Families arrive together, some carrying babies, others supporting elderly parents up the steps. People bow, light candles and pray to deities and ancestors for protection and prosperity in the year ahead.

I pause beside tables crowded with offerings: oranges for wealth and good luck, Chinese sweets, fruit and sometimes a whole cooked chicken. Nearby, people burn joss paper and imitation banknotes, sending gifts into the spirit world by smoke. The ancestors, it seems, require both nourishment and a functioning economy.

Red envelopes containing money are given to children, wishing them luck, health and a long life. This may be the one New Year tradition that children everywhere would adopt without requiring a detailed cultural explanation.

Door decorations are red. Envelopes are red. Yet surprisingly few people in the crowd are wearing it. Perhaps the custom is fading. Or perhaps the celebration is taking place discreetly beneath everyone’s clothes.

As darkness settles, the streets grow busier, and the crowd moves towards a stage at the edge of Chinatown. People claim places long before the musicians and dancers appear.  By the time I arrive, the audience has fused into a single, immovable organism. My view of the stage consists mainly of the backs of heads and a forest of raised phones. Photography becomes an exercise in optimism.

Traditional music and dance share the stage with distinctly modern interpretations. The result is less a careful reconstruction of the past than a living celebration – Chinese customs, Thai surroundings and contemporary entertainment all negotiating for the same patch of stage.

Lion and dragon dances are normally among the great spectacles of Chinese New Year, accompanied by enough drums and firecrackers to frighten evil spirits into another province. That year, however, celebrations across Thailand were quieter during the national mourning period following the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The reduced noise gives the evening a more restrained mood, although the food stalls show no sign of mourning, with their usual level of activity.

Bells traditionally ring at midnight to drive away bad luck, while firecrackers and fireworks bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new one. Chiang Mai’s celebration may be modest beside Asia’s great Chinese New Year spectacles, but modest is a relative term when the streets glow red, incense fills the temple, and dinner comes with symbolic guarantees of future prosperity.

The festival does not feel transplanted from somewhere else. It belongs here: among Thai food stalls, Chinese prayers, market traders, families and an occupying army of scooters.