Super high score: International friends have also begun to pay attention to the Spring Festival. Which continent in the United States declares the Spring Festival as a public holiday? Is it Hawaii?

Super high score: International friends have also begun to pay attention to the Spring Festival. Which continent in the United States declares the Spring Festival as a public holiday? Is it Hawaii? Or another continent?

New York State

The specific information is as follows:

On February 10, 2005, the Empire State Building, the tallest building in New York City, was lit up to represent celebration and peace. Auspicious colors of red and yellow to celebrate the arrival of the Chinese New Year. New York State in the United States has designated the New Year's Day of the Chinese lunar calendar as a statutory holiday in the state starting from that day. In California, known as the "Sunshine State" in the western United States, the number of Chinese Americans is also huge, and the contribution of the Chinese is no less than that of New York. Why is it New York and not California that lists the Spring Festival as a legal holiday?

International Herald Article The golden rooster croaks to welcome the New Year. While 1.3 billion Chinese people were immersed in the joyful and peaceful atmosphere of family reunions and gatherings of relatives and friends, New York State on the other side of the ocean also held large-scale celebrations across the state. The Empire State Building was lit up in red and yellow colors for the fifth year; the traditional float parade in Manhattan's Chinatown attracted hundreds of thousands of spectators, and many Chinese even drove there from outside New York State to feel the festive atmosphere of universal celebration. The reason for holding such a large-scale Spring Festival event is that New York State has designated the Spring Festival as a statutory holiday throughout the state, becoming the first state in the history of the United States to list the Spring Festival as a holiday.

It is not because the Chinese are powerful in New York politics

According to the statistical report of the U.S. Department of Commerce Census Bureau: the total number of Chinese Americans living in New York State is about 420,000; while the number of Chinese Americans in California during the same period With a population of 1.12 million, it firmly ranks as the “number one state for Chinese Americans”. In terms of education and employment, Chinese Americans in New York do not have an advantage: nearly 75% of Chinese are not fluent in English; 45% of Chinese immigrants over the age of 25 do not have a high school degree, and 30% have an annual family income of less than US$20,000. California has a long history of Chinese immigration, the Chinese are highly educated, and the local Chinese policies and public security system are better than those in New York.

The system of establishing the Spring Festival as a legal holiday was born in New York State, rather than in California, where there are more Chinese people. This shows that the implementation cost is relatively low in New York State. But in what aspects is this relatively low price reflected? Are there many Chinese in New York State’s political circles? That doesn't seem to be the case. In the 2004 U.S. election, Chinese-American California state representatives in the San Francisco area already accounted for four seats; and on January 2 this year, Meng Guanghui took office as the New York State Representative, ending the 200-year history of New York State without a Chinese-American representative. Although there are "three things that new officials should do when they take office", the persuasiveness of legislating just to celebrate the Spring Festival for the 200,000 Chinese who are striving for self-improvement and working hard to start a business is really limited.

Developing the tourism economy is the driving force behind festival legislation

With this question in mind, I visited the official website of the New York City Tourism Bureau. What comes into view is a long schedule, which lists various New Year flower markets, garden tours, exhibitions and performances held in the three Chinatown bases of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens during the Spring Festival. Looking at these colorful, flashing and jumping words, I seem to have some clues.

As we all know, New York City and San Francisco both have world-famous Chinatowns. Although San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest and has the longest history among American cities, it is relatively ancient; in contrast, New York's Chinatown is developing very rapidly. The old China Street in lower Manhattan used to have only two or three streets, but now it has developed into a Chinese community with a radius of 20 square kilometers and 30 streets. There are nearly 200,000 Chinese in the city, and it has the potential to catch up with Chinatown in San Francisco. In recent years, as the number of Chinese immigrating to New York continues to increase, three new Chinatowns have been added in Flushing, Queens, Sheepshead Bay, and Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and a considerable number of Chinese have purchased property there. real estate, forming a very concentrated Chinese residential group.

In recent years, Chinese activities to celebrate the Spring Festival have become more and more exciting and larger in scale. Chinatown has gradually become a good place to appreciate Chinese culture. The New York City Tourism Bureau listed the Chinatown Spring Festival event as a "can't miss" tourist attraction in its travel brochure, and released the official website of New York Chinatown, which is evidence of this. The charm of traditional Chinese culture and the huge financial resources it brings have made some major companies such as the New York City Tourism Bureau, Bank of America, American Media and Disney willing to promote, provide sponsorship, and even participate in celebrating the Spring Festival. At this time, it is a matter of course to designate the Spring Festival as a public holiday and organize large-scale Spring Festival activities, and combine it with the "golden sign" of New York's Chinatown to attract customers, develop the tourism industry, and stimulate the economy.

If people support their wishes, the cost of implementing the system will be greatly reduced. It is precisely because of this that Gordon's Spring Festival proposal came into being, and Chinese congressmen fought hard for it. In contrast, the California government, which is dominated by high-tech industries, obviously does not consider Chinatown as an important tourist attraction. The various Spring Festival activities from California cannot match those in New York in terms of scale and content, and most of them are spontaneously organized by Chinese people rather than organized by government agencies. Under such circumstances, the cost of proposing to write the Spring Festival into law is obviously too high. Even if the Chinese Americans support it with both hands, as long as the economic needs are not great, it is natural for the proposal to be shelved or even rejected. New York State lists the Spring Festival as a public holiday. On the surface, it seems to be a manifestation of the "rising status of the Chinese," but behind it is still economic factors.