Chinese New Year, known as Lunar New Year in many Asian countries, falls on Feb. 10 this year, following the lunar calendar.
“The overall significance of Lunar New Year in Asian cultures is the arrival of spring,” said Lily Berlin, youth program and communications assistant at Out Boulder County, which is co-hosting a Lunar New Year celebration on Feb. 2.
“In China, it’s a 15-day celebration in which people are enjoying and celebrating their customs,” said Jess Liu, owner of Creature Comforts cafe at 1647 Pearl Street. “We’re ushering in good luck for the year ahead.”
Growing up as a first-generation Chinese American in Houston, Texas, Liu said that Chinese New Year “was a time to recenter and really celebrate the culture that I have,” often with family, friends and food.
To celebrate Chinese and Lunar New Year, these four Boulder spots are offering traditional and unique bites, drinks and activities to usher in the Year of the Dragon.
A Cup of Peace
In 2006, Sungmi Kang opened A Cup of Peace at 3216 Arapahoe Avenue after a career managing yoga centers in Boulder, Westminster and Broomfield. Noticing that participants in the yoga classes often lingered to chat and drink tea, Kang envisioned creating a shop for them.
“I always thought I’d love to have a tea shop,” Kang said. A Cup of Peace quickly evolved beyond this idea as Kang expanded the menu to include healthy Korean food.
“We’re a Korean restaurant, but we don’t follow everything traditionally,” said Kang, who is Korean. While the menu features traditional Korean dishes like bulgogi, bibimbap and kimchi fried rice, A Cup of Peace uses organic beef, tofu and eggs, avoids MSG and offers gluten-free options.
On Saturday, Feb. 10, Kang will offer a Lunar New Year special for the first time.
“I was thinking, ‘I’d like to express my appreciation for customers,’” Kang said. As a gesture of gratitude, she decided to offer a free small cup of tteokguk to every customer who visits from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m on Feb. 10. Kang said this vegan broth soup with thinly sliced rice cakes is traditionally eaten in Korea during Lunar New Year.
Creature Comforts and Rising Tiger
In August 2023, Jess Liu opened Creature Comforts. In December, Liu reached out to Devin Keopraphay, the founder of Rising Tiger, to collaborate. Rising Tiger launched in 2020 as a brunch delivery service that has since evolved into a pop-up and catering brand based in Longmont. Last year, Keopraphay, a first-generation Laotian American, began cooking Asian American food at Longmont’s Saturday farmers market.
Liu wanted to add Rising Tiger’s scallion pancakes to the menu at Creature Comforts, where she promotes products from minority- and women-owned businesses. Liu has fond memories of enjoying the traditional Chinese flatbread growing up. Creature Comforts now sells Rising Tiger’s egg sandwiches — the veggie version has spinach and cheese and a meat version features Chinese-style sausage.
Keopraphay and Liu decided to collaborate again, this time for a Chinese New Year dinner. Their aim was to showcase their respective Asian-owned businesses.
“I have a space, and he has culinary prowess,” Liu said.
So on Feb. 10, Keopraphay will prepare eight courses for the Eight Treasures dinner at Creature Comforts.
“Eight is considered a fortuitous and lucky number in Chinese culture,” Liu said. For each course, Keopraphay will put his unique spin on traditional Chinese New Year’s dishes, while Liu will help explain the dishes’ histories to guests.
The first course will be oysters with cucumber and caviar, followed by a winter green and mandarin orange salad with almond and silky tofu dressing. For the third course, Keopraphay will serve sous vide eggs topped with a pickled tomato and scallion salad.
Liu said that the tomato and eggs is “a very popular homestyle dish that I’d mentioned to Devin that I personally love, but also that is not something that you would come across at a regular Chinese American restaurant.”
The fourth course will be lion’s head meatball, a traditional Chinese dish consisting of a pork meatball, roasted trumpet mushrooms and baby bok choy. The fifth course will feature See Yao Gai, Cantonese-style chicken. This will be followed by Chinese Longevity Noodles, a hand-pulled noodle stir fry with mung beans, pickled bamboo and snow peas.
For the seventh course, Keopraphay will prepare steamed catfish. The final course will be the popular Chinese New Year dessert Nian Gao, a pan-fried rice cake with red bean ice cream, candied cashews and coconut sugar.
“This is definitely an experience, and we want to bring people into that cultural insight,” Liu said. “How can we be active places of cultural influence in the Boulder community?” she added. “Devin and I are very passionate about that, being minority business owners in a not-so-minority-dominant community.”
Nearly half of the Eight Treasures dinner’s 40 tickets have been sold. Tickets for the Feb. 10 dinner from 6:30 to 9:30 are $118 and available on Eventbrite.
Ku Cha House of Tea
Qin Liu and Rong Pan relocated from China to Boulder as newlyweds to pursue their graduate studies at CU. While Liu studied electrical engineering, Pan pursued her MBA.
“We definitely always wanted to set up our own business,” Liu said. In 2005, Liu and Pan realized that dream by opening Ku Cha House of Tea in Boulder. After changing locations twice, they settled at 1211 Pearl Street in 2011. Ku Cha sells teaware, yet most customers buy loose leaf tea imported from China, Japan and India, as well as blends that Liu and Pan make themselves.
The couple has since opened four other Ku Chas, in Fort Collins, Lone Tree and Denver. But the Boulder Ku Cha is the only one large enough to offer traditional Chinese tea ceremonies.
“Chinese ceremonies are a bit more casual than the Japanese tea ceremonies,” Liu said. To commemorate the Chinese New Year on Feb. 10, Ku Cha will offer such a ceremony.
At 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., Ku Cha will host two tastings, providing samples of Chinese teas such as oolong and pu-erh teas, which are fermented and traditionally produced in China’s Yunnan Province. Accompanying these tastings will be shortbread cookies, mochi cakes and small tangerines — symbols of good luck often distributed during Chinese New Year. These tastings will be free and do not require reservations.
Additionally, Ku Cha will offer a free calligraphy class at 1 p.m. This class will teach participants how to hold a calligraphy brush and write simple Chinese letters.
“Boulder has a very small Chinese community,” Liu said. He and Pan are excited to “bring about Chinese culture to the public.”
Out Boulder County
Lily Berlin, a student at Metropolitan State University in Denver, helped start the Asian American Student International Association (AASIA) at Monarch High School in Louisville before graduating in 2020. Because of Berlin’s involvement with Out Boulder County, the organization reached out to her in 2019 to collaborate on a Lunar New Year’s celebration with AASIA.
On Feb. 2, from 5 to 8 p.m., the fifth annual Lunar New Year’s celebration co-hosted by Out Boulder County and AASIA will take place at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, 4215 Grinnell Avenue.
The event is free and will include catering from Golden Sun Chinese Restaurant, an origami dragon craft and a Lunar New Year trivia competition. Those bringing a dish to share are encouraged to make enough for at least 20 people, and attendees are invited to wear their cultural garments. A lion dance is also planned.
Berlin explained that the lion dance is a traditional performance that marks the beginning of the new year, symbolically warding off unwanted bad luck and bringing prosperity and longevity for the year. She emphasized that the annual event provides a space for people who may feel disconnected from their communities.
“For a lot of queer people of color, they’re excommunicated from their culture or their family, and they’re not able to celebrate culturally significant events like this,” Berlin said. This event helps “create this community with chosen family through another route to celebrate and acknowledge that culture.”
