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On Saturday, Feb. 4th, the McMullen Museum of art hosted the annual Lunar New Year Celebration, collaborating with the Asian Caucus (AC). The event was highly successful, lasting throughout the afternoon and featuring traditional food and exciting crafts such as button-making and coloring.
Ethia Hu, a member of AC described how members brought their own traditional dishes that had importance to them: “Every Chinese dish traditionally has a significance to eating it.”
She described noodles as standing for longevity, dumplings, and spring rolls typically symbolizing wealth, and fish as bringing increased prosperity in the new year. The offering of food serves to bring ancestors and other beings in the other world closer to oneself in Chinese tradition.
Family and community are key elements of the Lunar New Year and it showed in the event, with large tables to play card games, eat together, and be creative.
“Our family will sit together and have a lot of good food. Our grandparents will give us packets with money inside as a sign of good luck for the new year,” said Angie Sha, another AC member.
Eric Yu also said he spends time with family for the new year: “A common thing to do in my family is to eat hotpot. It’s very communal and everyone gets together to celebrate the Lunar New Year.”
As the caucus’s media chair, Eric describes the meaning of the event to the club, saying it has grown to become successful in the past few years and is a way to celebrate all cultural traditions for the new year.
“I think it’s a great event to get community members outside of AC involved and for everyone to come together,” he said.
Not only have AC members enjoyed participating in the activities and planning of the event, but staff members of the McMullen Museum have also looked forward to the Lunar New Year event as an exciting way to celebrate the year of the rabbit.
Courtenay Lutz has been working at the McMullen for over a year and has helped host many events through which clubs collaborate with the museum.
Courtenay said that she “tries to work at all the events because they are always so much fun” and loves “learning how to do the different crafts and teaching people how to do them.
The Lunar New Year event proved to be a success, with a large turnout and bumbling crowd around all tables and events. It is clear this Lunar New Year of the rabbit that the BC community is hoping for the chance to come together as a community and celebrate all different cultures.
