Students welcome Year of the Dragon
Students and community members welcomed the Year of the Dragon during the Chinese New Year Banquet in the TSC Ballroom on Saturday.
“We want … people beside Chinese to know about the lunar new year, and the Chinese culture as well,” said Vivian Kwok, Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) vice president of Student Life.
The two-hour banquet included musical, dance and spoken-word presentations by Chinese students, followed by fireworks on the HPER Field. One event, titled “If You Are the One,” was tailored after a dating-based TV show popular in China.
CSSA hosted the banquet, and local Chinese restaurants Black Pearl, Royal Express and Mandarin Garden Restaurant contributed. The fireworks display, which had to be cut short due to strong wind, was sponsored by ASUSU and the Science Council.
CSSA President Chao Guo said USU students came to the banquet, but members of the Cache Valley Chinese community and students from other universities in Utah and Idaho were also in attendance.
USU President Stan Albrecht and other university officials were also in attendance. Guo said he invited Albrecht one day when he saw him in the Taggart Student Center and was pleased that he came.
Guo said the Year of the Dragon began Jan. 23, but the holiday itself is traditionally celebrated by families in their homes. Larger celebrations with friends usually happen afterward, he said.
Parents give money to their children in red envelopes, or red packets, as part of the traditional New Year celebration, Kwok said.
CSSA incorporated the red packet tradition in its banquet, giving an envelope containing a raffle ticket to each guest. During the celebration, tickets were called and attendees won prizes, including an iPod Shuffle, Chanel Chance Eau Tendre perfume and a Nintendo Wii video game console.
Qi Fei, a graduate student from China studying biological engineering, attended the banquet with his friends Della Esparza, a freshman from Colorado majoring in Asian Studies, and Yoshi Heshiki, a graduate student from Japan studying biological engineering.
Fei said he enjoyed the show because he had friends among the performers.
The majority of speaking during the event was in Chinese, with some of the announcements between performances spoken in Chinese and English.
“I think they should have added some English,” Fei said. The performances were nice for Chinese speaking guests, but he thought his friends didn’t understand some of the show, he said.
“Everything was in Chinese,” Esparza said. “It would have been more interesting if I could understand it.”
Fei compared the Chinese New Year with holidays traditionally celebrated with families in America.
“It’s just like Thanksgiving or Christmas,” he said.
Guo said because many Chinese students can’t spend New Year’s with family, they look forward to the traditional CSSA banquet.
Spending the new year in the U.S., Kwok said she missed the red packets and the food.
Were she in China to celebrate the new year, she said she would’ve spent the first day of the year with her husband’s family and the second with her own.
– steve.kent@aggiemail.usu.edu