Lunar New Year
By: Jenna, Emi, Anvi, and Catherine
This year, Lunar New Year fell on Friday, Feb. 12th, the second day of winter term returns for on-campus students. The Academy and Asian affinity groups planned many different events for students to celebrate the New Year despite the restraints of the pandemic.
Both Elm Street and Wetherell dining halls served Asian food, including chicken chow mein, spring rolls, fried rice and dumplings. The Chinese Student Organization (CSO) held a Zoom scavenger hunt and watched the annual Chunwan festival together. In previous years, the Academy served Asian food at the dining halls, including hand-made dumplings from Exeter parents.
CSO member and lower Tony Cai reflected on past Lunar New Year celebrations at the Academy. “...the entire D-hall was decorated with lanterns and red lights. I was a bit surprised, but at the same time moved by the thoughtfulness of the Academy, offering me the warmth of Lunar New Year even tens of thousands of miles away from home,” he said.
According to senior and CSO member Scarlett Lin, CSO celebrated the previous Lunar New Year with a hot-pot dinner and coordinated a trip to Andover.
Many Asian students discussed how they celebrated Chinese New Year in past years at their own homes. “I would say my favorite part of Chinese New Year was when we, as a family, gathered in front of the television and watched the Spring Festival Gala (Chunwan). To be honest, it's not even that good, especially these several years, but I think what it symbolizes here is the sense of family and good wishes,” Cai noted.
Students also expressed their hopes for Lunar New Year this year. “I’m hoping to feel the same sense of community with the students as I do with my family,” upper Yvonne Jia said. “The [A]sian affinity clubs have definitely helped tremendously by providing the Asian identifying students with a community. I can speak for myself and others by saying we all really appreciate everything the leaders of those clubs do for the student body… I’m still hoping for a red envelope though.”
Senior and CSO co-head Christina Xiao commented on what she looked forward to seeing this year. “I'm hoping that we can still connect and celebrate over Zoom as energetically as before, and that the gift bags bring people happiness!”
Some students were unable to attend the celebration planned this year due to travelling, but for the students who were on campus, many felt content with the way the Academy organized the celebration. “I liked having some sort of Asian food on campus, it was great to see that Exeter was recognizing it [the holiday]. The food was also decently good… I know it’s hard for DHall to plan special events and being in a pandemic doesn't help so it was really nice that Exeter did something… I was satisfied,” prep Jonny Chen said.
Prep Jane Park was pleasantly surprised with how the Academy was able to celebrate such a big holiday, while still maintaining COVID guidelines. “One downside of the Lunar New Year dinner was the lack of representation of some Asian countries like Korea but knowing that Lunar New Year is more prominently celebrated in China, I believe the dining halls did the best that they could with what they had,” she added.
While most students appreciated the Academy’s efforts to make the Lunar New Year celebration resemble the traditional holiday as much as possible, other students noted a few small details the Academy missed. “I think it’s definitely nice that they put up quite a lot of decorations, but I have noticed some decorations that weren’t hung in the conventional way,” lower Jolie Ng said. “There are [were] decorations with the word 福 (fortune) printed on red paper and traditionally people would turn the paper and word upside down to hand, because the Chinese character for upside down sounds the same as the character for arrival, so it would then symbolize the arrival of fortune.”
