Merit's San Francisco team recently hosted a traditional Chinese New Year celebration, or Chinese Spring Festival, for residents at 888 7th Street. The team wanted to provide residents with a celebration to start the year off with good luck so they decorated the room in red gold paper lantern, red table clothes and symbols of the dragon figures, as Red is the color or symbol of good luck in Chinese culture.
Traditionally, when the Chinese celebrate the New Year they have a grand feast with eight to nine dishes, as these are considered to be lucky numbers. With this in mind, the team catered the event with traditional Chinese food which included pork and shrimp Siu Mye, shrimp and dumplings, spinach dumplings, spring polls, pork pot stickers, pork fried wontons, cream cheese crabmeat fried wontons, buns and custard tarts. In Chinese culture all of these foods represent everything from strength, wealth, and abundant blessing to happiness and good fortune.
The event was highlighted by San Francisco's Fei Tian Academy of the Arts who came to the event to promote cultural awareness and appreciation of traditional arts through their dance and performances. Residents and children were also entertained by learning how to fold a lotus flower.
Merit's team also distributed presents, which is one of the popular Chinese New Year traditions as it is a symbol of good luck and prosperity. The team filled red envelopes with shiny lucky pennies and passed out chocolate coins for the children coins. Each resident also received fresh Golden Gate Fortune cookie from one the of oldest handmade fortune cookie companies in San Francisco.
For more information on Merit events contact jfalkner@meritpm.com.
