The year of the dragon is just around the corner, marked by the Lunar New Year on Sunday — but observing the holiday can be a challenge for students away from home.
Lunar New Year is the celebration of spring’s arrival, full of traditions from communal feasts to reconnecting with ancestors. While the holiday, landing on Feb. 10, centers around family, GW students have found ways to celebrate away from home through old traditions and new communities.
This year will be the first time first-year Harry Liu is celebrating the Lunar New Year without his family. Typically, Liu celebrates the New Year in Myanmar, where he grew up. He said the biggest difference this year is he will be celebrating with his friends rather than his family.
“Chinese New Year is mostly about family,” Liu said. “For example, a big thing we do is pay homage to our ancestors.”
Liu said to do this ritual, his family sets up a shrine in their house, equipped with photos of his great-great grandparents and other ancestors. He said they burn incense and gather food. After their ritual is complete, the family enjoys the meal.
Liu said he plans to celebrate the New Year with the Chinese American Student Association. CASA, in association with the Vietnamese Student Association and a few other student organizations, hosted a banquet Feb. 3 filled with games like mahjong and musical chairs; authentic Chinese cuisine and Lion dancers, a dance performance that can include a two-person Lion team who carry the figurine; an instrumental team; and a clown — all meant to bring good fortune into the New Year.
“I’m pretty grateful for having the Chinese American Student Association,” Liu said. “Because I think coming to GW, it’s a bit of a culture shock in the sense that I lived in Asia, so I’m used to being around all of these Asians and having Asian culture be so prevalent. Whereas in America, it’s mostly American culture. So it’s nice to have a bit of that.”
Chinh Nguyen, a junior majoring in business analytics and the treasurer of the VSA, said he is happy to have found shared community within VSA.
“Sharing the culture with everyone else kind of makes me feel more familiar,” Nguyen said. “I’m an international student, so I’m far away from home. It’s good to have everyone who shares the same culture throughout just the organizations that you’re working with. It’s really fun, sharing the culture within the community of GW.”
Kerry Han, a first-year majoring in public health, said when growing up in America, he didn’t have many opportunities to embrace his ethnicity via a fully fledged celebration of the Lunar New Year. Han said his family in recent years has become “Americanized” and no longer celebrates the holiday, but he’s appreciated the chance to do so at GW.
“It’s a refreshing experience to be able to celebrate it again,” Han said.
Han said he misses the festivities a lot, especially the dancing and caramelized pork, a classic New Year dish meant to represent family affection. He said joining VSA has allowed him to connect with more Vietnamese students and traditions.
“It’s a really nice experience being able to re-explore again and be surrounded by other people who are similar,” Han said.
Sophomore Sophia Lin said her family urged her to come home for Lunar New Year, as she did last year, but their schedules didn’t align. She said her family instead focused on helping her celebrate at school. She said her mom plans on sending red door decorations, a traditional part of the holiday intended to bring good luck and ward off evil.
“We’re kind of welcoming change,” Lin said of the decorations. “We’re celebrating that one year is over and another one is starting, so a lot of that is sending away last year’s bad luck.”
Lin said food is an integral part of the New Year. She said in her family, the food spread can vary: Sometimes they have hot pot and other times they enjoy a big family-style meal. Last year, Lin said her family collectively prepared about 15 dishes — so much that their table wasn’t long enough to fit it all. Lin said the spread included her personal favorite of stir fry rice cakes, steamed fish, soup, eggs, noodles and her dad’s fried pork ribs.
She said each of the different dishes hold a special significance. For example, the steamed fish are kept whole, symbolizing health. Because stir fry rice cakes loosely resemble old coins, they are meant to bring wealth. Noodles signify longevity because of their length. Lin said her family really emphasizes eating two hard-boiled eggs during the meal, representing rebirth.
“It’s very much a full family endeavor,” Lin said. “We don’t have a really large kitchen, so sometimes it gets like, ‘You need to move out of the way!’ or that kind of thing. But it’s still part of celebrating: having family and being able to be like, ‘Oh, we have a free day to sit down and celebrate.’”
Lin said it has been really difficult not to be able to go home for the New Year, but she is thankful to have found a home within Sigma Psi Zeta, a GW sorority focused on Asian and Asian-American culture. In contrast to the predominantly white town she grew up in, Lin said joining this organization has allowed her to find a community among other Asian Americans.
“Even having a little bit of that and being able to share, this is something that’s really important and is something that is similar in every other culture, being able to celebrate with family,” she said. “Even on campus with friends it’s still good. Really good.”
