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How to Throw a ROCKIN’ Pan-APA New Year’s Party

By Neela Banerjee | AsianWeek

It’s Lunar New Year, and you know what that means: Time to throw a party! Did you spend New Year’s Eve watching the ball drop on T.V. and getting kissed on the cheek by some drunken fool? Well, forget those boring Western traditions — this year really do it up with a pan-Asian Pacific American New Year extravaganza that people will be talking about for years to come.

PLANNING

Get a few friends together for the planning: throwing a party all by yourself is just way too stressful. Throw the party at someone’s place with a backyard or sizeable porch, as firecrackers will most certainly be involved. Secure a DJ early, someone who will get the party shaking but also be into dropping the occasional Chinese/Indian/Korean/Thai pop tune into the mix.

Have fun with invites and theme. Yes, the overarching theme is the Chinese New Year but looking into various traditions gives you so many options. In Japanese traditions, the new year is celebrated over three days. On one of those days, people throw bonenkai parties: bonenkai literally means “year forgetting.” These parties often revolve around copious amounts of drinking and are especially popular in companies and among salarymen. So the bar area of your party site could have a Tokyo businessman theme.

In Cambodian culture, each new year has a guardian angel who protects it, called its thevada. It’s always fun to dress up like an angel, so that could be another option for a theme. If you want to go simple, most Asian New Year’s celebrations have to do with the buying and wearing of new clothes, so you can ask that everyone wear at least one new piece of clothing — it can be anything: from a three piece suit to a sweatband.

Of course, many of the Chinese New Year traditions revolve around bringing in and ensuring luck for the new year — so the theme could be luck, in any of its permutations. All the guests could bring something lucky, from four leaf clovers to more traditional Chinese signs like lions or a tangerines.

For the invitations, how about the red and gold lai see envelopes that are used to pass out money for Chinese New Year?

DECORATIONS

Red is a big part of Chinese New Year, and often people paint their doors red to celebrate. You could cover your door in red tissue paper or shiny red wrapping paper. Since it is the Year of the Ram, you can put up pictures of rams, goats and sheep all over the place — especially in weird places like the toilet seat or on the ceiling. Downloading ram imagery from the Internet might be the best bet, or you could have everyone involved in throwing the party draw a picture of a ram or sheep and display thoDe throughout the party. (More on drawing in the activity section.)

Chinese tradition also calls for the posting of couplets encouraging luck and prosperity for the new year around the doorway. Couplets are poetic expressions in pairs. Traditionally, the two halves of the pair have the same number of characters. The characters are carefully selected in meaning and rhythm to form a couplet depicting a specific theme. Make your own couplets, but directed more towards specific friends and family, and invite people to write their own.

Diwali, the Indian New Year celebration, is also known as the festival of lights. String white Christmas lights around and use this and candles as the only lighting at the party.

In Cambodian tradition, home altars are prepared to receive the new year’s angel with five candles, five incense holders, flowers, fruit, bay sey [a section of banana tree trunk with legs, on which three to seven layers of banana leaves are rolled up in finger shapes] and a bowl of perfumed water. Create your own New Year’s altar with objects and items that are important to you and your friends, or just from totally random found objects that you are elevating to importance.

FOOD

Finger foods are always the best for a party, otherwise it all starts to revolve around eating. Make it easy and get a few platters of shrimp cocktail from your local market. In Chinese culture, prawns are said to symbolize happiness and liveliness.

Noodles are important in both Chinese and Japanese celebrations. In Chinese tradition, noodles symbolize longevity, but they must be uncut. A cold noodle salad is a great party food, and not too hard to make. (See recipe sidebar.) In Japanese tradition, buckwheat noodles are served, so you can substitute the noodles in the salad with these. Another Japanese New Year food is kuri-kintonH or mashed sweet potatoes with chestnuts, which is good for nibbling.

Filipino tradition just calls for a good ole’ party for New Years, so serve up the quintessential Filipino party food: lumpia! I did come across a Filipino superstition that says that at midnight on New Year’s Eve, you should put food on the table to ensure an abundance of food for the year. So, you can hold off on putting the lumpia out and then bring it out to replenish the food.

For sweets, the Indian coconut burfi — a sugary, coconut concoction cut into diamond pieces — is great for parties. Also, a few trays of candy can be put out to spice it up. Chinese tradition calls for a circular or octagonal tray, preferably with eight compartments within the tray for various types of candies. Each type of candy symbolizes a form of good fortune, from lychee nuts, which symbolize close family relationships, to coconut for unity. Perhaps you can put out Everlasting Gobstoppers for longevity and Nerds for brainpower. Be creative.

Chinese sesame balls and mochi ice cream will round out the sweets perfectly.

DRINKS

Ahhh, the drinks: The life of any good party. It is a New Year’s party, so I would suggest a good amount of champagne. Japanese tradition calls for the drinking of otoso, or sweetened rice wine and it’s always a good time to drink some soju, the Korean rice liquor, or even try some Chinese chiew, or sorghum liquor.

But the key to a good party is the signature drink. Come up with a good New Year’s punch or drink for the designated bartender to serve up. (See my New Year’s Sake Surprise at the bottom of this page.)

ACTIVITIES

What’s more fun than drunk people setting off firecrackers? Not much I can think of. Gather everything from sparklers to Chinese firecrackers to bottle rockets — especially if you have a big outdoor area. Watch out for people’s extremities though, and know that fireworks might bring a little extra attention to your party you may not want: read 5-0.

As host, you and your friends should load up on monopoly money and hand out lai see in the thousands to people you like.

Activity stations or rooms are always fun. Like I said before, you could have crayons, markers and paper and have people draw their own rams. Having a couplet writing table might be a great challenge for those literary types. A naughty couplet contest might even be in order, complete with lucky prizes.

Some general tips I like to follow for a successful party — they aren’t for everybody though, be warned: invite way more people than could ever fit in the space you are holding it at; look fabulous; leave your party at its height and check out another party for a bit (but never leave for more than an hour); have only one bathroom for party guests; and most of all, have a blast.

Reach Neela Banerjee at nbanerjee@asianweek.com.