Miao New YearGlobal Spread

The United States has the largest overseas Miao population in the world, and the scale of Miao New Year celebrations there, both in size and participation, is unmatched among overseas Miao communities.

Sacramento: a Miao New Year gathering of 50,000 people. Sacramento has the third-largest Miao population in the United States, with around 30,000 residents of Miao ancestry. In November 2025, the California Exposition grounds, or Cal Expo, hosted its annual Miao New Year celebration, with an estimated 40,000 visits over the course of the weekend. Participants came from across the United States and even included some overseas travelers. The gathering has become one of the largest Miao cultural celebrations in the country, while also commemorating the important milestone of the Miao community’s 50 years of resettlement in the United States.

The most eye-catching feature of the event was the dazzling variety of Miao clothing. Women wore silver headdresses and embroidered chest pieces, while men wore traditional embroidered vests and belts; each garment carried symbols of family, region, and history. The grounds also featured handicraft areas, food markets, and cultural performances, where visitors could taste fragrant sticky rice, bamboo-tube chicken, hand-shaken milk tea, and candied fruit on skewers. In addition to music and dance, the program included traditional ball-tossing games, cultural lectures, and singing competitions. Organizers also created a special “Fifty Years of Stories Gallery”, presenting the history of Miao migration to the United States after the Vietnam War in 1975, including images documenting life in refugee camps and the community’s early settlement in California.

For many Miao families, this was not merely a festival celebration, but also a symbol of cultural homecoming and intergenerational connection. Zaven Wang, a local high school student whose parents came from Laos, attended specifically to experience the cultural celebration. He said, “This is a very important part of my life. I still cannot speak Miao very well, but I want to learn because it is part of our family heritage.” He admitted that he rarely had opportunities at school to interact with other Miao students, so the New Year celebration allowed him to meet more people with the same cultural background. “I’m really happy to be able to find a sense of belonging here.”

Wisconsin: a winter gathering of nearly 30,000 people. On December 14 and 15, 2024, nearly 30,000 members of Wisconsin’s Miao community gathered at the State Fair to celebrate Miao New Year in grand style. Over the two-day celebration, nearly 30,000 people filled the hall. Looking across the venue, crowds surged everywhere, and amid the brightly colored gathering it was almost impossible not to be swept up in the joyful atmosphere. Miao people of all ages are skilled in song and dance, and men and women in festive dress sang and danced as expressions of joy, harmony, and celebration filled their faces.

Miao clothing carries strong ethnic characteristics and has been described as “history draped over the body, culture worn upon the body.” Women’s attire is often ornamented with silver and decorated with intricate, brilliantly colored patterns of considerable artistic value. Traditional Miao foods include well-known dishes such as Miao-style fermented fish, cured pork, beef with pickled vegetables, and fish in sour soup; in recent years, bubble tea has also become especially popular among younger people. Notably, the Wisconsin Chinese Chamber of Commerce participated in the Miao New Year celebration for the first time as a sponsor, expressing support for the Miao Asian minority community.

Minnesota: the Miao cultural center of the Twin Cities. Minnesota is home to the second-largest Miao population in the United States after California, with most residents concentrated in Minneapolis and St. Paul, collectively known as the Twin Cities. Miao New Year celebrations in Minnesota are large in scale and include ball tossing, Miao song and dance, Miao beauty pageants, and large marketplaces selling Miao goods.

Minnesota hosts an annual Miss Hmong pageant. Ball tossing is a traditional social activity for young men and women during Miao New Year—young men and women stand in two facing rows and toss balls back and forth. Traditionally, one would throw the ball to someone one favored, though today the activity is more recreational and its courtship element has been greatly reduced. During the festival, both traditional and modern performances are indispensable. At Miao marketplaces, goods include Miao films or music discs, Miao clothing and ornaments, Miao books and newspapers, traditional Miao snacks, and even Chinese herbal medicines.

Colorado: Miao New Year on Thanksgiving weekend. In Colorado, Miao New Year is held each year over the two days of Thanksgiving weekend and is organized primarily by the Colorado Hmong Association. Colorado’s Miao population is relatively small, so the festival is more modest in scale, but the Colorado Hmong Student Association also uses the occasion to raise scholarship funds. This combination of a traditional festival with public-benefit activities reveals a new function that Miao New Year has taken on in contemporary American society.

The changing timing of Miao New Year in the United States. The customs of Miao people in the United States and those in Laos are fundamentally the same, because most migrated from Laos to the United States within the past 40 years. Broadly similar to Miao communities in China, they enter the Miao New Year season from the first day of the tenth lunar month, with each community or family choosing a different date on which to celebrate. Yet under the impact of urbanization, the timing of Miao New Year in the United States has changed considerably—many communities no longer choose the date according to the lunar calendar, but instead allow well-organized and influential associations to discuss and decide it. Generally speaking, Minnesota, Colorado, and some parts of California celebrate in late November, while Miao New Year in Fresno, California, is usually held in late December around Christmas. Weekends and public holidays are increasingly preferred so that more Miao people can participate.

Activities at Miao New Year generally include song-and-dance performances, traditional Miao songs and dances, and the traditional ball-tossing game. There are also performances of popular songs in the Miao language, and even Chinese popular songs sung in Miao. Another major activity is football, with small stalls arranged around the playing area. Miao New Year also includes a traditional soul-calling ritual, intended to call back ancestral spirits and pass cultural traditions on to the next generation.

Asia is the region where the culture of Miao New Year has spread most deeply and extensively. Miao communities are widely distributed across Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, and other Southeast Asian countries, where Miao New Year has been transmitted from generation to generation.

Europe was one of the important destinations for the resettlement of Miao refugees. During the 1960s and 1970s, under the impact of the Vietnam War, some Miao people from Laos and Vietnam fled to Thailand. Through coordination by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, some of these refugees were resettled in France and Germany. Over more than 40 years, they faced challenges involving language, employment, education, housing, and many other aspects of life, gradually adapting to local society.

France and Germany: transmission and adaptation of Miao New Year in Europe. France and Germany have different immigration policies and social environments, which have also influenced cultural transmission within their Miao communities. Miao groups have actively absorbed elements of local culture and combined them with their own traditions in innovative ways. As their most important traditional festival, Miao New Year centers on rites honoring ancestral spirits and rituals intended to avert misfortune and secure peace. It contains the emotional belonging and identity of its participants and has continued to be transmitted in foreign lands, providing comfort and cohesion for Miao refugees dispersed across different places. At the same time, the festival has assumed a flexible and open form among them, strengthening ethnic identity.

For Miao communities in Europe, Miao New Year is a time of reunion. Because resettlement, employment, marriage, and other circumstances have placed people in different cities, festivals provide rare opportunities for them to gather. Celebrations emphasize “participation by all,” regardless of age or gender—children join their parents, taste Miao dishes, and learn to “toss the bag”, gaining an intuitive understanding of Miao culture through participation. For young men and women, public activities such as festivals also provide valuable opportunities to meet other Miao people.

New Year’s Eve: a new tradition among European Miao communities. Celebrating New Year’s Eve is a European tradition, and among Europe’s Miao population these celebrations take place within families and communities, with participants mainly consisting of Miao relatives and family members. On December 31, 2016, preparations for a New Year’s Eve gathering in Germany’s Miao community began early in the morning. The activity was organized and attended by community members and held in a shared public hall, with each household bringing its own dishes. From the morning onward, women in each family moved busily between kitchen and living room, while men and women, young and old, all actively joined in preparing the food.

Festival activities among Europe’s Miao communities demonstrate how traditional culture adjusts within new social contexts—certain elements must change, yet Miao New Year celebrations continue, allowing traditional culture to be passed on. New Year’s Eve, absorbed from local culture, likewise helps shape community solidarity, strengthen ethnic identity, and provide a place for emotional belonging.

Australia and New Zealand: gatherings of Miao people from around the world. Australia and New Zealand also have Miao immigrant communities. During the 2017 Leishan Miao New Year Intangible Cultural Heritage Showcase, celebration groups of Miao people from Australia gathered in Leishan and celebrated the festival together with 160,000 Miao residents of the county. This model of “returning to China to celebrate Miao New Year” has become an important way for overseas Miao communities to maintain cultural connections with their ancestral homeland.

Lunar New Year celebrations in Australia nearly fill the entire 15-day festive period in the three cities with the country’s largest Asian populations—Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Within these multicultural celebrations, Miao culture is presented through dance, music, and other forms.

The spread of Miao New Year in Africa is still in its early stages. As an international ethnic community, the Miao have established a presence across the world’s continents. With increasingly close China-Africa exchanges and the continued development of the Belt and Road Initiative, Miao New Year culture is expected gradually to spread across the African continent through cultural exhibitions, Confucius Institutes, and other channels.