A year without a Lunar New Year celebration at Penn would have been “like not having Christmas,” according to College of Liberal and Professional Studies student Thang Thai. This is why he and nine other students organized Penn’s Lunar New Year celebration, which will be held Thursday at 7 p.m. in Houston Hall.
The organization that normally plans the celebration backed out at the last minute, according to an Undergraduate Assembly report. As a result, a group of friends decided to work together to organize another celebration in its place, according to co-organizer and College senior Henry Chow.
“We felt that it would be a horrible precedent to set for freshmen, to say that it’s okay not to have a Lunar New Year celebration,” Chow said.
Preparation for the event began one week ago, according to co-organizer and College senior Audrey Chang.
Chow and Chang contacted people they thought might be interested in helping plan a celebration.
“Most of us went on a snowboarding trip a couple weeks ago, and we realized all these people would probably care about the same things and we called them,” Chang said of all ten organizers.
They named themselves “Team Lunar New Year” after a hectic week of e-mails, meetings, phone calls and planning, according to College sophomore Amanda Young.
“Each organizer has committed a great amount of time and effort,” Young said.
The organizers reached out to various cultural organizations, potential sponsors and local businesses to secure prizes and donations for the event.
“We applied for every possible source of funding because we really wanted to make it free to all Penn students,” Young said. “There was an overwhelmingly positive response.”
The event will feature performances from various Asian performing arts groups, including the Pan-Asian Dance Troupe and Penn Lions, a group that dances with a traditional Chinese lion costume.
There are 12 Asian cultural organizations co-hosting the event. Each organization will bring a dessert unique to its own culture so that attendees can sample various cuisines.
“We really want to emphasize the cultural aspect of Lunar New Year and how it’s not just Chinese New Year, but very diverse,” Chang said.
The event will also feature various contests and raffles, including a noodle-eating contest in which participants can’t use their hands.
“We all have memories of Chinese New Year growing up,” Engineering sophomore and co-organizer Philip Louie said. “We would not have let [the celebration] not occur.”
