This article is featured in the 2025 Winter Carnival Special Issue.
Though Asian and Asian American enrollment at the College has a shorter history than at some other colleges, celebrations of the Lunar New Year on campus have a past that can be traced back decades. Today, these traditions still hold an important place for many Asian students.
The Chinese Students and Scholars Association — now the Dartmouth Chinese Student Association — hosted Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival, celebrations as far back as 1999, according to The Dartmouth archive.
At the time, the event was labeled “Chinese New Year.” Celebrated in Collis Common Ground, the event had an entrance fee of $3.00 and featured Chinese food from Panda House — which permanently closed in 2005 — traditional Chinese games and Chinese cultural performances.
Later events marked an embracing of Lunar New Year celebrations by the wider College community. In 2007, the Office of Pluralism and Leadership hosted its first Lunar New Year celebration at the top of the Hopkins Center for the Arts, with free admission, according to a Rauner archive. The Gund Kwok Lion Dance Troupe performed an eponymous lion dance — in which performers mimic the movement of a lion through a large-scale puppet to bring luck and good fortune.
Two years later, planning Lunar New Year celebrations became a more collaborative effort, according to DCSA president Kate Yin ’26. On Jan. 25, 2009, the Dartmouth Asian Organization organized a Lunar New Year celebration alongside the Council on Student Organizations and several Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese student groups, according to the poster archive from the Rauner Library.
Historically, the Asian societies, cultures and languages department has also been involved with Lunar New Year celebrations. According to ASCL senior lecturer Alan Aimin Li, Lunar New Year events have “always” taken place in the Chinese Language House — which was created in1951 — and have received funding from the College. The ASCL department has a resident professor from China each year who lives in the house and typically leads the celebratory events, Li added.
This year, the Chinese Language House hosted a Chinese food dinner, featuring dumplings, and a raffle ticket lottery for prizes at the end of the event.
As of late, Dartmouth’s Lunar New Year traditions have grown and endured pandemic-era challenges. From 2020 to 2023, HopStops, a free programming initiative for younger audiences presented by the Hopkins Center for the Arts, hosted a dumpling workshop over Zoom, according to Karen Henderson.
Collaborations between DCSA and the Hopkins Center have since become a hallmark of Dartmouth’s celebrations. In January 2024, the Hopkins Center collaborated with the Asian Cultural Center of Vermont and DCSA to host a dragon dance — a traditional dance performance with a team of dancers manipulating a dragon puppet.
This year, Lunar New Year celebrations included a collaboration between DCSA, Special Programs and Events Committee and OPAL with free Han Fusion catering, a photo booth, party games and prizes; the Korean Student Association’s dinner at McLaughlin Commons and the Vietnam Association’s catered pho dinner in One Wheelock. On the day of Lunar New Year, the Class of 1953 Commons also put up decorations and served related food for dinner.
According to Hopkins Center project manager Karen Henderson, the film “Over the Moon” was also on display this year for children to enjoy in the HopStops. The film is about Fei Fei, a young girl who goes on an adventure to prove the existence of a Moon Goddess, which is aligned with the Lunar New Year.
In recent years, Li said he has noticed an increased interest in Asian culture, with more people “aware of” and participating in Lunar New Year events.
“I think we have had a lot of students interested in anything related to Chinese culture, Chinese traditions, things like that,” he said.
This year, Henderson said she has focused her efforts on increasing student engagement with the holiday.
“I [have] been trying to work on making those kinds of celebrations a little bit more robust and getting more students involved,” she said. “We’re always trying to figure out how we can support [student-organized celebrations].”
In an email statement to The Dartmouth, Yin wrote that she has noticed an increased emphasis on student-led programming. The DCSA has also become more proactive in its Lunar New Year planning efforts in recent years, hosting large-scale events and making Lunar New Year events more accessible to the public, she explained.
“When I first joined [DCSA] as a freshman, I was quite surprised to find that there were zero events on campus that celebrated traditional holidays in Asian cultures [held by undergraduate organizations],” Yin wrote.
In the years since, Yin’s efforts have allowed the DCSA to open its annual Lunar New Year celebration dinner to more students by applying for special funding and holding the event in larger spaces. This year, the event took place in the Class of 1982 Engineering and Computer Science Center in the South Atrium from 5-8 p.m.
“There wasn’t a strong DCSA presence on campus [when I was a freshman],” Yin said. “I, along with some other friends, decided to take charge of DCSA and revitalize it by running more events, including the Lunar New Year celebration dinner.”
Ultimately, Lunar New Year at Dartmouth has evolved to include multiple undergraduate organizations, centers and administrators working together to unite the community. History will continue to be made by current students as a robust Asian community grows on campus.
