New Year Celebrations Are About to Begin at the Lan Su Chinese Garden

The Year of the Rat was pretty lousy. Let’s welcome the Ox, which is a symbol of stability and strength.

A 20 foot lit, dragon lantern sculpture highlights the lantern displays as part of the Chinese New Year traditional Lantern Viewing Evenings at Lan Su Chinese Garden.
By Andi Prewitt

If anything, the Year of the Rat was aptly named.

At long last, starting Friday, Feb. 12, you can welcome the Year of the Ox, and Portland's Lan Su Chinese Garden is hosting a two-week celebration to mark the occasion, with pandemic protocols in place for everyone's safety.

Instead of holding crowd-generating performances, the garden on Northeast Everett Street will offer educational displays and contact-free audio tours on Chinese New Year traditions. There's even a feature for the kids: an interactive mobile scavenger hunt where you search for oxen hidden throughout the property.

Since reopening last December, the attraction has capped capacity, timed admissions and altered viewing paths so that traffic travels one way only. Lan Su has not canceled its lantern viewings, scheduled for Feb. 25 through 28. Crowd size is limited, and you will need to purchase tickets in advance online for timed entry. Each visitor is limited to one hour.

Despite the restrictions, the garden says the show will be just as grand as years past when there was no global health crisis—the promised highlight is a new 18-foot phoenix lantern sculpture from China, which has always been a symbol of rebirth and feminine strength in Chinese culture.

"It's our hope to provide an opportunity to experience this millennium-old celebration," Elizabeth Nye, Lan Su's executive director, said in a press release, "and to mark the new year with the positive energy of the ox."

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