Lunar New Year in Richmond BC

The first thing to understand

People ask me where the Lunar New Year parade is in Richmond BC, and the honest answer is that there isn't one, not in the way they mean. If you want a dragon coming down a closed street with drums and a crowd ten deep, that is Vancouver's Chinatown, and it is worth the trip on the Canada Line. Richmond's version of the new year lives somewhere else: in the malls along No. 3 Road, in the temples out on No. 5, in supermarkets at nine on a Tuesday night, and mostly in kitchens and around tables where you are not invited unless somebody invites you.

That is not a shortfall. It is just a different shape, and once you know the shape you can plan around it. Roughly half of Richmond marks this holiday in some form, which means the whole city runs on a different schedule for about three weeks. Restaurants book out. Parking gets worse. Certain foods appear and then disappear again for eleven months.

The two weeks before matter more than the day

I grew up doing the run-up with my parents, so for me the season has always started with logistics rather than celebration. The build-up is when the city is at its most interesting anyway.

Aberdeen Centre has run the big flower and gift market in the weeks beforehand for as long as I have been going. The atrium fills with orchids, kumquat trees in fruit, pussy willow branches, narcissus bulbs, calligraphy stalls, red envelopes in every design imaginable, and the tiered candy boxes that end up on every coffee table in the city. It is loud and crowded and genuinely fun to walk through even if you buy nothing. Richmond Centre and the plazas along the corridor run smaller versions of the same thing, and pop-up stalls appear in strip malls where they were not the week before. Lansdowne has been in the middle of redevelopment, so I would not count on anything there without checking first.

Then there is the grocery run, which is where the season gets serious. The big supermarkets on and around No. 3 Road turn into something close to a rugby match in the last week: cases of mandarins moving out the door, whole chickens, pomelo, dried oysters, dried scallops, fat choy, mushrooms, sausage, nian gao stacked in towers by the till. My advice, learned the hard way, is to do this shop ten days out, not three. The difference between the second-last weekend and the last weekend is the difference between a busy store and a store where the aisles have stopped functioning.

One more errand nobody warns you about. If you are giving red envelopes, you want crisp bills, and the banks run low on new notes as the day approaches. Go early. Even amounts, and skip anything with a four in it.

Lion dance and where to actually catch it

The lion dance is the public-facing part of the holiday here, and it moves rather than stays put. Troupes work the malls, the plazas and the individual businesses, especially restaurants and shops that book a blessing for their opening day back after the break. Aberdeen, Parker Place, Richmond Centre and the bigger plazas usually schedule performances on and around the day itself, and those get posted ahead of time.

If you have small children, be warned that the drums and the firecracker-style noise are loud in an enclosed mall atrium. My niece loved it at six and had to be carried out at three. Stand toward the back, where you can still see and your kid can still hear next week.

The temples on No. 5 Road

The stretch of No. 5 Road down in the southeast of the city is known locally as the Highway to Heaven, because of the row of religious institutions built along it under a land-use arrangement that is unusual in the Lower Mainland. The International Buddhist Temple, near Steveston Highway, is the one most people mean when they talk about visiting at new year. What I have seen there in past years is lantern displays and incense offerings around the turn of the year.

Practical notes rather than spiritual ones, since the schedule is theirs to publish and not mine to guess at. It is January or February in a river delta, and you will spend a lot of that visit standing outside in the cold and probably in the wet, so dress like you mean it. Parking overflows onto the road and the shoulders, and it is a long walk in from the last spot. Go on an ordinary evening in the week before if you want to see the grounds properly with room to move. And if you are visiting a temple you do not belong to, the etiquette is simple: be quiet, watch what everyone else does, follow it, and do not photograph people at prayer.

Eating: book weeks ahead or wait a week

This is the part that catches people out every year. The reunion dinner and the banquets that follow it are the centre of the holiday, and Richmond's large seafood restaurants are where a very large number of families hold them. The set menus go up in advance and the tables go fast. If you want a proper new year dinner at a room like Fisherman's Terrace Seafood Restaurant, Jade Seafood Restaurant, Chef Tony Seafood Restaurant or Golden Paramount Seafood Restaurant, you are booking well ahead, not on the day. Same for dim sum during that first week, which is chaos of a cheerful sort, but chaos.

The other half of the picture is closures. Plenty of small family-run kitchens shut for several days over the holiday, particularly the owner-operated places along Alexandra Road and in the strip malls. This is completely normal and completely reasonable, and it means a plan built around one specific small restaurant can fall apart. Call first. Or do what I do, which is to accept that the first days belong to the big rooms and the chains, and eat hot pot instead. Haidilao Hot Pot and Liuyishou Hotpot Richmond are both the right food for a cold February night anyway, though I would still ring ahead during that first week.

If you have any flexibility at all, the smartest move is to celebrate a week late. Book your dinner out for the second week, when the pressure has come off, the small places have reopened, the kitchens are not running at three hundred percent, and you can get a table at a civilised hour.

The food that only shows up now

Bakeries are where the season is easiest to participate in without a reservation or an invitation. Nian gao, the sticky sweet rice cake, appears in stacks and then vanishes. So do turnip cake, puffed sesame balls, coconut candy and the box assortments. Kam Do Bakery at Parker Place is a reliable stop for that whole category. Anna's Cake House and Maxim's Bakery both handle the traditional side well, and Saint Germain Bakery at Aberdeen Centre is convenient if you are already fighting the flower market crowd upstairs.

At home, the classics hold: a whole fish served with head and tail intact, dumplings, longevity noodles left uncut, and jai, the vegetarian dish eaten on the first day. I am a bad cook and I say that without embarrassment. I buy the nian gao, I bring fruit, and I let people who can actually cook handle the rest.

Getting around during the season

No. 3 Road is worse than usual for those two weeks and the Aberdeen parkade is a genuine test of character on the final weekend. Take the Canada Line if you can. Aberdeen Station puts you into the mall without ever touching a parking ramp, and Lansdowne and Brighouse cover the rest of the corridor. If you must drive, go on a weekday evening rather than a weekend afternoon, and park at the far end of whatever lot you land in rather than circling the entrance with everyone else.

How I do it

Shop early, in the second-last week, on a weeknight. Walk the Aberdeen flower market once with no shopping list, purely to look at it. Pick up nian gao and a box of something from a bakery. Visit the temple grounds on a quiet evening rather than on the day. Skip the crush of the first-week restaurant scramble entirely and book dinner for the following weekend, when it is possible to hear the person across the table. It is a longer, slower version of the holiday, and I have come round to thinking it is the better one.