Students decked out campus spaces with red and gold lanterns, wall hangings and lights throughout the last week to ring in Lunar New Year. Various cultural clubs and organizations held their own Lunar New Year events and socials across the first week of the new year, which began Feb. 17.
One such event was a celebration for Tết, or Vietnamese Lunar New Year. The event was co-hosted by the Vietnamese Student Association, the Southeast Asian Student Coalition and the office of ASUC Senator Sydnee Thy.
“This is very nostalgic to me,” said Mi Tang, Thy’s chief of staff. “Growing up in San Francisco … when I went to school I only knew one other Viet person. I really found a sense of identity and sense of purpose here.”
The event featured traditional Vietnamese games such as bầu cua cá cọp, a game played with dice, and lô tô, a variation of bingo. Attendees also played a trivia game with questions themed around Lunar New Year traditions with the opportunity to win red envelopes.
April Le, internal director of the Southeast Asian Student Coalition, painted her nails in an intricate red and gold design for Lunar New Year.
“(Painting my nails) makes me feel more connected to my roots,” April Le said, mentioning Tippi Hedren, an American actress who helped Vietnamese Americans start nail businesses in California in the 1970s.
Shayna Shanara, co-president of the Berkeley Indonesian Student Association, said she and other Muslim Indonesian students are celebrating Lunar New Year and Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting from dawn to dusk, at the same time. Shanara said she broke her fast with Chinese food at the club’s evening social, which was also co-hosted by Thy’s office.
“We aim to have a lot of cultural events (such as) Eid (and) Lunar New Year,” Shanara said. “I feel like it’s very important for us to celebrate those holidays together.”
The Chinese Student Association continued its 14-year tradition of hosting a Lunar New Year banquet, featuring performances from groups such as Cal VSA Lion Dance, Cal Wushu and Chinese dance group Fei Tian Dancers. Campus bands and ensembles, including the Nikkei Choral Ensemble and Ra-On, also performed songs in English, Chinese and Japanese.
The audience let out audible gasps as Cal Wushu performed a series of backflips, pulled out phone flashlights during campus band Ra-On’s rendition of Taiwanese singer WeiBird’s “Ru Guo Ke Yi” and petted the VSA Lion Dance lions as they bobbed and weaved around the banquet tables.
The event sold more than 160 general admission tickets, according to Erin Li, a CSA executive officer. The banquet’s menu featured egg rolls, bok choy, eggplant and fried rice catered by Flower Lounge, a Cantonese restaurant in Oakland.
“For a Lunar New Year celebration, food is always a must-have,” Li said.
According to campus senior An Le, a previous head coordinator with Cal VSA Lion Dance, lion dancing is performed during Lunar New Year to bring in luck and prosperity.
Although the tradition originated in China, An Le said the team practices a hybrid of different regional styles, including those from Vietnam, Korea, Japan and Malaysia. An Le, who has been involved with lion dancing since seventh grade, said Lunar New Year is the team’s busiest season.
For international students and others who were unable to celebrate with family members, the Lunar New Year events on campus provided a sense of cultural connection and community.
“Not being home with family to celebrate the Lunar New Year Day, I think lion dancing is one of the ways that I am able to embrace and enjoy my culture with others that celebrate it,” An Le said.
Kelly Tang, co-president of the Fei Tian Dancers, which showcased Chinese dance at CSA’s banquet, said the performance was special because it reminded her of Lunar New Year celebrations in China.
“It’s a good time for international students to feel like, even though they’re abroad, they’re still with people,” Tang said. “(During) Lunar New Year, you usually celebrate with family, and those kinds of events bring people all together.”