Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year, is the festival that celebrates the beginning of a New Year on the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. It’s a great time to celebrate and spend time with friends and family. From China to South Korea, so many people celebrate this tradition that goes back generations. Here at MS158 we’re doing something too! Our own Asian Cultural Club is using this time to give back to the community! I interviewed two of the people in charge of the club, Ms. Wei and Ms. Wang and here's what they had to say about the Lunar New Year and the activities we’re doing/the activities we could do!
What is the Asian Culture Club doing to celebrate?
Mr. Wei: “So this Tuesday we made some lanterns, and next week we don't meet but the week after that (which is Chinese New Year) we will be practicing calligraphy. Calligraphy is sort of some soft writing on red paper.”
Ms. Wang: “So far we’ve decorated lanterns using students' own ideas, they’re allowed to use whatever they want to decorate the lanterns. A lot of people wrote Chinese words on the lanterns and added in some details to make them unique. In the next meeting we’re going to do calligraphy and write “‘lucky words’” on paper.”
Are you happy with the results so far?
Ms. Wei: “Yeah definitely, you have people like Mrs. Wong, who’s the other Chinese Teacher doing calligraphy and lanterns for Chinese New Year and it's really great. (You can see some of these lanterns in the thumbnail for this article!)
Ms. Wang: “Definitely, I can show you some images or videos on what we’ve done and what we’re going to do next session.”
Do you personally celebrate the Lunar Year outside of school? What do you do?
Ms Wei: “Well I’m from Taiwan and what we usually do there is get together with friends and family and eat meals like fish, sometimes even a whole fish from the eyes to the tail. This is sort of meant to show that from the beginning of the year to the end of the year will be great. Since the pandemic I’ve still been celebrating but definitely not as much.”
Ms. Wang: “For my family we would make dumplings on Lunar New Years Eve and stuff a lot of special foods inside the dumplings so whoever eats them gets good luck for the New Year! That's definitely one of my special traditions.”
What Is your favorite part of the Lunar New Year? Why?
Ms. Wei: “My favorite part was always receiving red envelopes when I was younger, it was sort of my source of income when I was younger.”
Ms. Wang: “I always love getting together with family and friends plus as a kid I would always love getting red envelopes and money.”
Do you think there's anything else the school as a whole should do to celebrate?
Ms. Wei: “I think maybe we could have a show together, maybe an annual show about the story of Chinese New Year? We can't really have Chinese food together since we have so many students. But maybe the lunch ladies can have some sort of a custom food during this time like dumplings or something.”
Ms. Wang: “Yes actually, I think we can do some paper cut-outs to decorate the whole school and maybe if you want you can do some calligraphy and write some “lucky words.” This year is also the Year of the Tiger so maybe we can make some drawings of Tigers or something like that. Keep in mind the “‘lucky color’” of the Lunar New Year would be red which is also our school color so there's a lot that can be done with that.
Do you think that Asian Hate will affect the Lunar New Year this year?
Ms. Wei: “I don't really think so, the Asian hostility has sort of started to disappear now, so I really dont think it will be an issue at this point.”
Ms. Wang: “I don't really think that could be a big issue because it's sort of started to die down. Plus Lunar New Year is a time for everyone to come together so hopefully we can all come together to enjoy it.”
As you can see from these interviews we are doing quite a bit for Lunar New Year! Since I’ve started writing this article I’ve started seeing lanterns on doors and at the main entrance! We also have Lunar New Year off (which I’m sure is one of the main takeaways for most people) and hopefully we can get some of the ideas Ms. Wei and Ms. Wang had implemented. But to wrap this article up I hope you all have a wonderful Lunar New Year and found this article interesting!