On Saturday, Jan. 21st, DSU held a cultural event in Richardson Ballroom to teach students about the Lunar New Year and to let them experience some traditions that included a short lecture about the holiday by Dr. Catherine Chang, dances by the Queen City Lion Dancers, and performances by two secondary students playing the Chinese harp.
Dr. Chang, an assistant professor of history, was very excited to share this holiday experience with Winthrop University and talk about it with students.
“The Lunar New Year has been a really important part of traditional societies, in many Asian countries, including China, Korea and other Chinese-speaking areas or areas influenced by Chinese culture.” Dr. Chang said.
“It is a really important time, just like Thanksgiving or Christmas in the United States. The families should be together.”
Chang also noted how she was excited to share how this holiday has evolved and how traditions have changed over the passing years.
“I will introduce the different practices in different areas of traditional China. And I will introduce some new changes in their practices today.” Chang said. “It depends on the country because the customs have been changing a lot. It depends on every country’s degree of modernization. So they would keep or kind of drop certain customs.”
Chang also spoke about how she’s happy that there’s finally been so much progress in making Lunar New Year a national holiday.
“This year in California, they have made the Lunar New Year a holiday. So I think this shows respect to a really important group of people in this country. And then, in that case, although we are in South Carolina, we can see that we still are living in this world, with a lot of interactions with people of different races in the world. And to know their cultures, it is the beginning to build true friendship.
Abby Russo and Quinitn McCray, who are both seniors, attended the cultural event and had a great experience learning about Lunar New Year.
“I thought it would be cool to learn about a culture that I’m not super familiar with,” McCray said.
Russo said she because she had received a red envelope invitation and was interested in learning more,
“A lot of my friends sent me red envelopes that they use for Lunar New Year and I just wanted to come and learn more about their culture,” Russo said.
Russo left this experience with new knowledge about the Chinese instrument that was played that evening.
“I had never heard of the Chinese harp before.” Russo said, “That was so cool and unique.”
