News > February 14, 2008

By Jacob Bathanti | Staff writer

University librarian Cristina Yu first put together a celebration for the Chinese New Year nine years ago, in the year of the dragon. Her daughters were beginning to get old enough to appreciate their Chinese culture.

“I felt the time was right,” said Yu. “I wanted them to know their own culture a little better.”

That inaugural effort drew some 200 people.

This year on Feb. 16, attendance at the Chinese New Year Festival in Reynolds Gym 201 is projected to be three times that. Yu’s daughters, 15 and 13-years-old, are now old enough to perform in the festival, which will welcome the year of the rat.

In the past, the zodiacal aspects of the New Year played an important role in the lives of children born during that year.

This festival, however, will draw a crowd that doesn’t take fortune-telling quite so seriously.

It will draw many people from the community who will bring their children to learn about their ancestral culture in a family-friendly social gathering.

Yu hopes it will draw some students from the university community as well.

“People appreciate the opportunity,” Yu said.

For the first time in its history, the centerpiece of the festival will be a mock traditional wedding ceremony.

The actors, clad in the red garb appropriate to auspicious occasions in Chinese culture, will be university students from the Asian Student Interest Association, which is helping with the festival.

In conjunction with the mock wedding, a traditional Lion Dance will be performed by Yu’s daughters.

The Lion Dance, performed to bring good luck, incorporates many stunts derived from martial arts.

Two people, one at the head and one at the tail, carry a large lion costume and move it about in a highly stylized and acrobatic fashion.

A plethora of other activities will take place at the festival.

Other presentations, which begin at 2 p.m., will include a tai chi fan dance, among other activities.

While many westerners are familiar with tai chi only as an exercise routine, it is in fact a martial tradition, and the fan can be used as a weapon.

A taekwondo exhibition will take place, incorporating the board-breaking familiar to western audiences.

In addition to these bellicose spectacles, a performance of children’s folk dances will take place.

Other activities will include various arts and crafts, some more focused on children.

Attendees can construct rats out of modeling clay, have their names translated into Chinese and make the red paper envelopes for holding the money that often serves as a New Year’s present.

For a small fee, festival-goers can have their pictures taken in traditional Chinese costumes, and food from Great China will be available for purchase.

Prianka Waghray, president of ASIA, characterized the process of planning the celebration as a thoroughly collaborative effort.

While Yu is the driving force behind the event, the help given to her by students is of vital importance.

Waghray, for example, is one of several students who will perform in the mock wedding.

ASIA has been instrumental in helping plan and execute the festivities, particularly with advertising. The Office of Multicultural Affairs has also helped, providing publicity and funding for an event that has the potential to offer members of the local Chinese community with a chance to share in an important celebration.

No less significant is that the festival gives university students a chance to broaden their cultural horizons.

“I think it’s important for not just Asians, but for members of other cultures to help preserve the culture in a Western environment,” Waghray said.