Splashing in the Buddhist New Year

Water flew through the air Sunday at Middle School 56 on Henry Street as hundreds of men, women and children splashed each other clean of last year’s troubles in a Burmese water celebration of the Buddhist New Year. Organizers estimate as many as 3,000 people enjoyed traditional food, dance, song and ceremonies in one of the largest annual gatherings of Burmese outside of their country and the largest gathering of Burmese, or Myanmar, in the United States.
 
Those who attended the Rakhaing ThinGyan Burmese New Year Water Festival—mostly Burmese living in and around New York with a smattering of Westerners—listened to music, honored several elderly community members with gifts as part of a respect ceremony and perused booths lining the yard that sold food, jewelry and traditional handicrafts. Volunteers from the ThinGyan Association, a non-profit dedicated to promoting Burmese culture and arts, ran the tenth annual festival on individual donations as well as revenue from an annual raffle. This year, a donated 1.32 caret Burmese Ruby and tickets to a Broadway show made up the grand prize roster.
 
In Myanmar, formerly Burma, and in other Buddhist countries as well as other areas of the United States, Buddhists celebrate the New Year in April.  In New York however, the Burmese find April weather a little cold for the splashing of ice water required to celebrate their holiday, known as ThinGyan.  “Thin” means fragrant, fresh or new and “gyan” means past. Combined, the term refers to the renewal of a person after he or she is cleansed.   The celebration, determined by a lunar calendar, lasts three to four days in Myanmar, depending on the moon.
 
“Here, we get only one day,” says festival volunteer Min Yun, 25, who grew up in Rangoon and moved to Queens two years ago.  Tun, who sings and plays guitar for the Burmese Youth Society of the Arts, has integrated the traditions of his homeland with his new life in New York City, meditating at a Burmese Buddhist monastery in Jackson Heights and playfully answering his cell phone “Where you are, bitch?” when a male friend calls him from across the school yard. He promises it’s a term of endearment.
 
Endearment is what the splashing holiday is all about, says Executive Director Kyaw Tha Hla of the ThinGyan Association, who describes the water ceremony as a flirtation between young men and women. “During waterplay, that’s when you try to meet your mate,” he continues as all around him children run through the school yard with Super Soaker water guns and men in sarongs walk up behind women to douse them with bowls of water. 
 
Hla has chosen the Rakhaing water ceremony, as opposed to a ceremony from one of the other three former kingdoms of Myanmar, because the current military dictatorship in his country no longer allows the coed ceremony to be performed in Myanmar.  During the ritual, young men and young women stand at either side of a wooden boat filled with water and splash each other.  “It’s not so much political as it is cultural,” he says of his choice.  
 
Like Hla, festival goers made few references to the Burmese military government currently under strict sanctions for abuse of human rights by the United States, the European Union and several Asian countries. 
 
Neither was there any mention of popular opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi whose hunger strikes and other protests often make headlines. Instead, the Burmese community of New York rang in an apolitical new year. Though invited, no government representatives of the Myanmar Mission to the United Nations attended the festival, said Gitlin.
 
Thinn Pyu, 22 and her cousins Tara Lynn, 17 and Kay Win, 20 rode the Chinatown bus from Maryland to New York for the day to check out the festival before getting back on the bus at 5 p.m. They came for the celebration, the boys and the food, they say. 
 
“I don’t know what I ate, what was it again?,” laughed Lynn, a Burmese-American born in Hawaii, who had to ask her cousin for the names of the food she tried. Vendors served a range of traditional food including white rice mixed with dyed red rice and cooked with raisins and bowls of ice and durian, a delicious but stinky fruit that smells like blue cheese or rotten meat.
 
In the morning, volunteers including Marcie Gitlin took part in a fashion show of traditional Burmese dress. She wore a pink longui, or Burmese sarong with a shawl made of netting that tied under the right arm. Each of the ethnic groups of Burma has a different style of sarong, distinguishable by the patterns and fastenings.  “Sometimes it’s the actual outfit, sometimes it’s the way it’s tied,” explains Gitlin, who got involved with the organization after traveling to Burma in 2001. She carries a Burmese cloth bag and wears Burmese sandals along with a collection of Burmese gems in Western set rings.
 
“Anyone who goes to Burma falls in love with it,” she says.  And from observing such a charming tradition as the annual water festival, it’s not hard to see why.