Lunar New Year is a time for family, friends and dumplings. It’s more important than ever before for us to celebrate it. Like so many Asian immigrants, my parents left behind everything to build a better life. We moved to Cardiff in Wales, a city in the UK with only a handful of Chinese people. I was embarrassed to be Chinese—other kids made fun of the food I brought to school, the clothes I wore. I felt very alone. Years later, I moved to California for graduate school. There were suddenly Asian Americans all around me—my doctor was Asian, so was my dentist. I almost exclusively ate Asian foods and spoke Mandarin whenever I could. Getting to know Asians in America allowed me to embrace who I am: a first generation British-Chinese woman.

In the last two years, more than 10,000 hate incidents against Asian people were reported in the US alone. On a run in Brooklyn, I was verbally attacked and threatened. Thousands of miles away in the UK, my parents were verbally attacked by a stranger banging on their car window while they waited at a traffic light. The racial bias and hate against Asians across the world has never been more prominent. And yet—this time has made many of us more proud to be Asian than ever before, and motivated to speak up against anti-Asian hate. In this time of racial bias and hate, we must come together to celebrate diversity.

We can all take steps to denounce Asian stereotypes, support local Asian-owned businesses and donate to Asian community groups. One of my earliest memories is knocking on doors in Beijing and being handed a lucky red envelope. My relatives and I now enthusiastically share our virtual red envelopes on WeChat. I’m so excited to share this experience with our community at ADAY, so we can celebrate the Year of the Tiger together.

We’re giving out virtual lucky red envelopes to wish you joy and good fortune. We’ve also teamed up with other Asian-founded businesses you can support and we’ll be donating proceeds from each order to Heart of Dinner so they can deliver hot meals and produce to Asian elders in New York.

新年好,

Meg He
何梦依
Co-founder + co-CEO, ADAY

With your ADAY purchase we will be donating a portion of the proceeds to Heart of Dinner, a 501(c)3 non-profit that delivers weekly hot lunches, fresh produce + bulk ingredients to Asian elders throughout the Manhattan area.