Red envelopes hidden around campus early Monday hinted at the commencement of SCC’s Lunar New Year festivities, hot on the heels of the Lunar New Year that was celebrated on Saturday, Feb. 10. The season traditionally starts with Lunar New Year’s Eve and a big feast with friends and/or family, then trails into the night, with playing card games and catching up with your loved ones. The next morning, children and unmarried adults awoke with glee to the excitement of red envelopes given by married couples filled with cash, as a symbol of “Good Luck” for the year. Some cultures even put the red envelopes under their pillow.
On Thursday, Feb. 15, from noon to 2:00 p.m., the PUB Main Dining Room hosted red lanterns, dancing dragons, and the thundering echoes of drums. The full spectrum of SCC’s community was gathered to enjoy the festivities. Savvy Mau, Lunar New Year’s Student Lead Coordinator, expressed that the organizers feel “It is important for us to celebrate Lunar New Year here at SCC as we are an extremely diverse community and I believe that we need to give recognition to all cultural traditions.”
Students were able to exchange the red envelopes for little prizes. The student exchange community from Denmark were drawn to the calligraphy workshops. Around the circumference of the stage and dance floor, student clubs set up booths to offer informative games, bubble tea and dumplings. On the dance floor, the crowd delighted in two major performances: Lion dance and Dragon dance.
After the event, students walked towards the API (Asian Pacific Islander) Center, in room 1305, being led by the organizers of the event. The previous year, people were led into the center by the lion dancers, but not this year. Mau explained, “This is what we originally planned but due to the rainy weather, it unfortunately didn’t happen.”
Mau says, the organizers, “tried to include cultural traditions such as origami making. Since this year, the Chinese animal zodiac that is being celebrated is the dragon, we decided to create origami dragons.” The origami dragons are distributed to the toddlers from SCC’s daycare.
Darain, a domestic student who attended the event, joined in the after party in the API Center. “I was there for last year’s Lunar New Year. I really liked it because it’s me getting exposure to a whole different culture… get[ing] to learn something new,” he said.
With multiple Asian countries celebrating Lunar New Year, there are countless family and cultural traditions, and only a handful could be properly represented this year. Lunar New Year festivities are centuries-old traditions that have been passed down through generations.
