The URI community welcomed the Year of the Pig through dancing, food and celebration. Photo by Grace DeSanti.
University of Rhode Island students, faculty and community members gathered to eat traditional Chinese food, partake in various activities and experience performances from multiple URI groups at the Chinese New Year celebration held on Saturday, Feb. 16 in the Memorial Union.
The Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, started Feb. 5 and lasted until Feb. 19. Chinese New Year is a very large celebration in China and is comparable to Christmas in the United States.
To many of the attendees, the celebration offers a taste of home. Jiuzhou Tu, an ocean engineering student at URI from China, said that he looked forward to many things that would remind him of home at the celebration.
“I look forward to the p
The line for the buffet of food was out the door at the start of the celebration. Among other things, baozi was offered, which Tu was particularly looking forward to. Baozi is a type of meat or vegetable-filled bun or bread.
Asha Gibson, from Riverside, Rhode Island, came for a specific reason– her son is adopted from China.
“He was born in Hong Kong, so we always are on the lookout for community events that have some Chinese culture involved so it was one of the reasons we wanted to come,” Gibson said.
Gibson expressed the importance of the event to her family and said she wants to help her son experience his culture.
“Chinese culture is now part of our family,” she said. “So we wanted to keep that, helping him to remember his culture and then to learn more about it.”
Students from the Chinese Language program both volunteered and performed at the event. There were multiple performances, which included singing and dancing. Students also performed from the Chinese Culture Club, Chinese Student Scholar Association, the Asian Student Association, and students from various Chinese language classes.
Members of the Chinese Culture Club performed a traditional dance called “Good Fortune” while two students from the CHN 306 class performed a comedic dance titled “Steal the Red Envelope.” “Steal the Red Envelope,” depicted two people fighting over a red envelope, which during Chinese New Year usually contains money, only to find that it was empty.
The celebration was especially meaningful to some students who performed. Verity Cheslo is a double major in Chinese and supply chain management. Cheslo, with fellow Chinese language student Sarah Chambers, performed the song, “Peng You Bie Ku,” meaning “Friend Don’t Cry,” by Lui Fong. The song is personal to them as they will be parting ways at the end of this semester.
“We started seeing these together freshman year,”
Assistant Professor of Chinese at URI, Yu (Joyce) Wu, said that the turnout every year is awesome. Wu said this year they were particularly excited as a lot of the different programs are represented at the event by students who are learning Chinese.
“Spring Festival is [a] really important festival for Chinese, and that’s why we celebrate the festival,” Yiping Zhang, a lecturer of Chinese at URI, said.
Zhang said she hoped both the Chinese community and people interested in Chinese culture could come together for the event.
“We want to involve the Chinese community and also everyone who’s interested in Chinese culture or just Chinese food.” Zhang said. “We just want to get everyone together and have fun. We hope everyone can enjoy the event and we hope we celebrate it every year.”
The celebration offered many activities including calligraphy, Chinese riddles, coloring pictures of Chinese opera masks, Chinese chess and an activity involving trying to pick up ping pong balls with chopsticks.