Asian Student Groups Collaborate for Lunar New Year Celebration

While ribbon dancers, lion dancers, fortune tellers and kung fu performers dynamically rotate through the center of the room, the walls of Davis Ballroom are lined with booths boasting delicious Asian snacks and engaging games and activities. Students, staff and community members gather to honor their most important holiday of the year and to share it with others. The scene: a celebratory festival of the Lunar New Year, to be put on by several different Asian student groups on the Smith campus and to be held on March 1 in the Davis Ballroom from 6 to 9 p.m. This year, the Vietnamese Student Association (VSA), Asian Students Association (ASA) and the Chinese Inter-Regional Student Cultural Organization (CISCO) are all working to ring in the Year of the Rat at Smith.

The Lunar New Year refers to the beginning of the year in several East Asian calendars, including the Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean. In each of these cultures, this holiday is the most important of the year and is celebrated by upholding a myriad of traditions. This year, the New Year will be celebrated from Feb. 7 to 9.

Thuy Le '09, a co-chair of the VSA, explained that "the Lunar New Year comes with the first full moon of the year, and they created it because of the farmers' harvest. We have dishes with good luck, really special names."

In the Vietnamese tradition, the Lunar New Year is commonly referred to as Tet. Preparations for the holiday often begin months before; superstition has it that one should pay off their debts so as to be debt-free for the holiday. Parents traditionally buy new clothes for their children and some families follow an established list of "do's and don'ts" for the holiday season, including purchasing a great deal of water so as to insure that money flows "like water currents in a stream," according to an ancient proverb.

"I think the Vietnamese and the Chinese celebrate in the most alike way because there's a lot of history between Vietnam and China," Thuy stated. As a result of this cultural intersection, the aforementioned student groups have traditionally corroborated on the event planning, as they share similar experiences and customs.

According to Jennifer Li '11, a co-chair of CISCO, the conventions are usually "around the same" for different families, "with little alterations depending on the different countries." Li recalled, "The day before New Year's Day you clean the house and you clean everything; you get a haircut before then. Once it's the New Year, you're not supposed to clean for three days because if you clean it will take away all the good luck."

Heng Tam '10, the other co-chair of CISCO, noted, "You're not supposed to buy shoes because the word in Cantonese sounds.like a sigh. It's like it's bad luck!"

As a result of such varied and rich traditions, the event will serve the dual purpose of celebrating Asian heritage and of educating the community. "We really want to make it a community thing. In the past, a lot of Northampton and Pioneer Valley families come and bring their kids. There's a big Vietnamese adoption population in the Valley, so their parents usually bring them along," Thuy noted.

"We want to try to make it like a festival, like a carnival type of deal," she said. "You pay for a certain amount of tickets and that's how you pay for food."

At the festival, the different student groups are working together to bring several traditional desserts for the New Year. Heng cited popular desserts tong yuen and sticky rice cakes as featured items. "It's not going to be dinner, but there will be little snacks," Judy Lei '11, a member of CISCO, stated.

Lei, has been energetically recruiting dancers for the ribbon dance routine that she is organizing. Other group members will be fashioning their own activities and performances based around traditional Asian culture, like letter making, origami and sushi. Also at the event will be a fortuneteller who, according to Heng, "is supposed to be a god of fortune and wealth.it's like Santa!"

The lion dancing routine has customarily been the most popular of the events, in which a professional group performs the traditional dance. Performers mimic a lion's movement in a lion costume. "A lot of people go to watch because not too many places offer them and you can't really see them often," Thuy explained.

The Year of the Rat has been welcomed since ancient times as a prosperous and protective year, as the first of the 12-year cycle of animals. As each animal and year carries different characteristics, the rat is often associated with aggression, wealth, charm, death and atrocities.

"Come celebrate the New Year in a different way! A lot of people don't know that there are many ways to celebrate the New Year in various cultures," Thuy stated. "With the Lunar New Year, a lot of people know about it, but they don't really know anything about the traditions. Come see shows you wouldn't normally see, like the lion dance!"

The celebration will be held in the Davis Ballroom on Sunday, March 1 from 6 to 9 p.m.