On Wednesday, Feb.8, the Asian American Student Union (AASU) held a Lunar New Year celebration during lunch in the Student Commons. “I hope that [the students] learned more about East Asian culture and Lunar New Year because I think that Lunar New Year isn’t as popular in America, it’s not really a big holiday on the calendar either. So, I just hope they learned about it and maybe celebrate themselves if they want,” freshman Anna Jhon said.

The celebration had a large turnout, and was successful in highlighting the importance and excitement of the Lunar New Year. “I’m hoping [the students] just had a fun time for the most part, and if they haven’t had Lunar New Year before, maybe they will be more interested in it in the future and just have a better understanding of some Asian holidays,” Chu said.

While there were food and snacks available for students to enjoy, the games proved to be popular. “I just really liked seeing all the people join and try to interact with the culture. We had a lot of people playing board games. It was nice to see that some people were trying to learn new things about Asian traditions,” club vice president junior Indie Viriyakul said.

The club had origami, food and several traditional Chinese board games for students to play during the event. “A lot of times Lunar New Year is more of a family gathering, so a lot of times they just eat food or play some board games so I kind of wanted to incorporate that which is why I made sure we had [games] like Mahjong, Weiqi, Xiangqi, and then we had a couple snacks for everyone to enjoy,” club president junior Ziqing Chu said.

The leadership team hosted the celebration during lunch to ensure that all students could participate and learn more about the holiday. “It was good to see it wasn’t just East Asians, it was people from different backgrounds. So, I think the event itself was more diverse, it was great to highlight East Asian culture,” freshman Anna Jhon said.