Campus Chinese New Year celebration brings more than 1,000

Piles of food waited for more than a thousand guests as they stood in a line stretching from IU Auditorium’s lobby through the atrium to celebrate the Chinese New Year, China’s biggest annual holiday.

The New Year began at midnight Jan. 31, which is usually when the big celebration happens.

Many students travel to be with other family and friends in the United States, sophomore Choaman Li said, so the IU Chinese Scholars and Student Association planned the event a week late this year.

The New Year, often called the Spring Festival, is a time for Chinese to reunite with family, sophomore Xixi Zhou said. She said people typically watch TV together and eat a lot of food.

“We miss our parents,” Zhou said. “Some people don’t miss them, but most of us do.”

The IU CSSA did its best to accommodate Chinese students by making the event close to the celebrations students would have taken part in at home.

“We have the big shows to make us feel like home,” Li said. “Most students come here to feel like a big family. It’s beautiful.”

Several volunteers worked to organize the event. They directed people, served food, sang and danced.

Freshman volunteer Anita Ma served food and said she was surprised by the amount of traditional dishes.

The volunteers served  braised pork cut into cubes in brown sauce, a tomato and scrambled egg dish and a small round pouch made from dumpling dough, colored white and pink and filled with smashed, sweet red beans.

Ma said traditionally, people eat this dish because it is believed to bring longevity and good luck for the new year. The color red commonly means good luck, thus the pinkish-red coloring and red beans.

Though Zhou said the traditional dishes still tasted like American Chinese food, Ma said she thought differently.

“I didn’t expect traditional dishes,” Ma said. “Chinese made it though, so it tasted traditional.”

After everyone finished eating, the attendees filed into their seats to watch acts put on by volunteers.

Dancer Echo Lu has been dancing at the Spring Festival for the past two years, she said. This will be her last year.

She’s going to step down and focus on her studies for senior year, she said.

In October 2010 she founded her dance group, D Force, which performed both hip-hop and traditional dance pieces for the event.

She said she wanted her last performance to be about love.

During their dance, they staged a man proposing to another man.

At the end, a lesbian couple joined the group of dancers to form a heart shape.

“The theme is about love,” Lu said. “Romantic love, family love, the love you have with your best friends, just all kinds.”

Lu said she loves dance and her family of fellow dancers, but she is stepping down so the group can build structure and she can work on getting a job.

“It’s dramatic,” Lu said. “I think I’m going to cry after the dance. I’m just so proud of all my dancers. We all became friends because we all love dance.”

Chris Bishop, a junior, was one of two emcees for the night who was not of Chinese descent.

Although Bishop speaks with a British accent, he emceed in Mandarin Chinese.

Bishop started practicing Chinese when he was 16, but soon gave up.

Later on, he said, he encountered more and more Chinese-Americans and tried speaking Mandarin again.

He said that’s when he fell in love with the culture and language.

Two weeks before the show, Bishop received a text message asking if he would help host.

He said he felt intimidated because he knew it would be daunting to speak Chinese in front of fluent speakers.

“I knew it would be a challenge, but I knew it was something I would need to experience in order to improve my language skills,” Bishop said.

Though he made a few mistakes and said he could have made his performance more polished, he was proud at the end of the night.

Despite being British among a majority of Asian attendees, Bishop said he didn’t feel like an outsider.

“It’s my choice whether or not I have fun,” Bishop said. “When they’re having fun, I’m having fun.”

After serving food and enjoying the performances, Ma reflected on the evening.

She said she loved the performances and the humor they brought, but missed the encouragement some traditions from home brought for the New Year.

“This is not a small event,” Ma said. “Not only Chinese people come. This is a chance to show our long history, and I wish we did more of that.”

Follow reporter Suzanne Grossman on Twitter @suzannepaige6.