2023’s Best Cities for Lunar New Year Celebrations

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, time to gather with your loved ones and feast on fish, fruit, and dumplings to welcome the Lunar New Year and while for the first time, various Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) groups in Ridgewood are collaborating to produce a community-wide celebration of our holiday.

The question is which U.S. cities are best for ringing in the Year of the Rabbit?

To find out, Lawn Love ranked 2023’s Best Cities for Lunar New Year Celebrations..

We compared the 200 biggest U.S. cities based on four categories broken down into 11 metrics, such as Asian American population size, Lunar New Year festivals and events, fireworks legality, and safety. We also awarded bonus points to cities with a Chinatown district.

Check out the 10 best (and 10 worst) cities for Lunar New Year Celebrations below, followed by key insights from our report. (See where your city ranks.)

Best Cities for Lunar New Year
Rank  City
1New York, NY
2San Francisco, CA
3Los Angeles, CA
4Houston, TX
5Honolulu, HI
6Chicago, IL
7Las Vegas, NV
8Seattle, WA
9Austin, TX
10San Diego, CA

Worst Cities for Lunar New Year
Rank  City
1 Springfield, MO
2Little Rock, AR
3Shreveport, LA
4Kansas City, KS
5Syracuse, NY
6Springfield, MA
7Joliet, IL
8Eugene, OR
9Huntsville, AL
10West Valley City, UT

Key insights:

New Year in New York: For the second year in a row, New York lucks out as the Best City to Celebrate Lunar New Year.

Home to a whopping nine Chinatown neighborhoods, NYC has the largest population of Chinese and Chinese Americans out of all the cities in our ranking. NYC also has the highest number of Chinese and Asian Meetup groups and the third-highest number of Lunar New Year events and festivals.

All that glitters is not gold: Out of 43 California cities represented, only 11 ranked below average. This year, San Francisco (No. 2) has the most Lunar New Year events. SF also has the second-biggest population of Chinese Americans, while Los Angeles (No. 3) has the nation’s largest population of other East Asians.

Unfortunately, neither of these cities has a great safety record, especially for Asian Americans. Hate crimes against Asian Americans in California rose 178% in 2021. Today, many cities along the West Coast, including Seattle (No. 8) and 19 California cities, have high rates of hate crimes.

Fortune frowns: Some cities in the South and Midwest aren’t ready to ring in the Year of the Rabbit. Apart from Chicago (No. 6), only two other Midwestern cities — Cleveland (No. 61) and St. Louis (No. 84) — landed in the top half of our ranking.

Other cities like Kansas City, Kansas; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Shreveport, Louisiana, fell to the very bottom, alongside Springfield, Missouri, in last place. Each of these four cities has low scores across the board, with few or no celebrations planned and poor safety records.

Our full ranking is available here: https://lawnlove.com/blog/best-cities-to-celebrate-chinese-new-year/