On Jan. 29, as global celebrations of the Lunar New Year commenced, College and student organizations alike rang in the Year of the Snake with a slate of on-campus programming.
Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese student affinity groups, along with the College’s dining and arts organizations, hosted various celebrations with traditional food and activities across campus last week.
On Jan. 25, the Chinese Student Association hosted an event at the Class of 1982 Engineering and Computer Science Center, which offered Chinese cuisine including dumplings, noodles and meat dishes from Han Fusion, according to CSA vice president Katharine Tang ’27.
“Han Fusion specially ordered duck for us, which is not on their regular menu,” Tang wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth.
Tang said the event was a way to “get the community together” to celebrate the new year and “just enjoy the food.” She added that the CSA wanted to “spread the word about this holiday.”
“Lunar New Year doesn’t just encompass Chinese New Year,” Tang said. “It encompasses all the different [regions] that follow the lunar calendar. … It was honestly a great way to just celebrate Asian culture.”
According to Tang, this was the second year that the CSA has hosted a Lunar New Year event. This year’s iteration, though, was “larger-scale” because of the club’s preexisting relationships with College staff from last year’s event and the growing size of the organization, she said.
Several other student organizations also hosted events with different cuisines to celebrate. The Korean Student Association hosted its event on the day of the new year with food from Young’s Restaurant, a Korean and Japanese establishment in West Lebanon, according to KSA president Boseong Kim ’26
The event was a “space for the Asian and Asian American community at Dartmouth” to enjoy food beyond the offerings at the Class of 1953 Commons, Kim said.
The Vietnamese Student Association hosted a free pho event in One Wheelock on the day of the new year, according to VSA co-president Alan Lam ’27, who said the group wanted to “create a space for people to … get to know how we celebrate our new year.”
“It’s winter. Everyone’s cold,” Lam said. “[Pho is] a great winter food because it’s hot.”
During a Jan. 31 event co-sponsored by the Chinese Language House and the Asian societies, cultures and languages department, students sang traditional Chinese songs, made dumplings, played mahjong and trivia and participated in paper-cutting and calligraphy crafts, according to Chinese language professor Lei Yan.
The atmosphere of the event felt like a “family,” Yan said.
“I feel here is like a family, like our Chinese community, our own house,” she said. “So I think here is the best place [to hold the Lunar New Year event].”
Chinese drill instructor Lingxiao Liu ’28, who hosted trivia during the event, said she appreciated the turnout, adding that she wants people to “be curious and learn more” about Chinese culture.
“I really enjoyed reconnecting with some of my Chinese friends and also meeting new people,” Liu said.
Along with student organizations, the College also held its own events to ring in the holiday. Dartmouth Dining hosted a specialty dinner on the night of the Lunar New Year at the Class of 1953 Commons. According to an email statement from ’53 Commons guest experience manager Haishan Li, the “most popular” food items at the event were “sushi, lo mein noodles, cha shao bao buns and dumplings.”
Li also said in an interview that Dartmouth Dining staff observed “extremely long lines” for those dishes and plans to “spread” them across different stations to “improv[e] event flow” in future years.
This year marked the first time Dartmouth Dining held Lunar New Year celebrations during dinner service instead of at Late Night. Li said the dinner was possible due to increases in staff “capacity” and a pre-planned “special order” of Asian food products that “not a lot of vendors” carry in volume.
Li said the feedback she received was “rewarding” and that a “few kids even [gave her a] hug.”
“We have more and more Asian American students here and … Asian students here,” Li said. “[Dining wants to] welcome them to feel like this is also their home — this is also their community.”
The College’s art and media centers also hosted art and film activities, respectively, themed around the Lunar New Year. On Feb. 1, the Hood Museum of Art hosted an event “for all ages” with snacks and activities such as coloring pages and decorating traditional red envelopes and scales on a snake banner.
Museum educator Catherine Coggins said she hopes attendees who also celebrate the Lunar New Year off campus got a “little taste of comfort at home,” while others were able to get “into a space that maybe some of them don’t know.”
During the event, the museum offered tours of the “Attitude of Coexistence” exhibition, which explores the depiction of non-human subjects in East Asian art.
Exhibit curator Haely Chang said her “perspectives” on the audience of Hood Museum exhibits shifted after seeing how many “children and families” from the Upper Valley participated in last year’s Lunar New Year party at the Hood to “learn more [and] get involved as part of their own culture.”
Hopkins Center for the Arts head of film and media Johanna Evans wrote in a statement to The Dartmouth that the Hopkins Center screened “Over the Moon” — an animated film that centers on Chinese cultural traditions — at its HopStops event on Feb. 1.
Katherine Tang ’27 is a former news writer for The Dartmouth. She was not involved in the writing or production of this article.
Jackson Hyde '28 is an intended philosophy major from Los Angeles, California. His interests include photography, meditation, and board game design.
