Happy Chinese New Year!
culture  

Happy Chinese New Year!

By Jessica Yeung

Hi everyone, So this past Friday was the start of Chinese New Year! I learned that the celebration actually lasts 15 days in China. Before coming to Caltech, my family and I have gone to a few Chinese New Year celebrations, but we aren’t very traditional and we do not celebrate for 15 days. I do remember receiving red pockets filled with money as a kid from my parents and other family friends. And every year, I express special greetings of luck and prosperity to my parents. At Caltech this year, the Chinese language classes had a combined celebration with some traditional desserts and snacks. Our teachers came up with some questions and riddles about Chinese New Year to discuss. For instance, some questions were: Why is the Chinese word for year ‘nian’? What colors are traditionally used for Chinese New Year and why? What types of foods are traditionally eaten? And speaking of food, this weekend was celebrated with a lot of food. Avery had Formal Dinner on Friday. A few of my friends decided to celebrate Chinese New Year on Saturday with Dim Sum. On Saturday night, The Caltech Chinese Student Association also decided to host a cooking party at Tom Mannion’s house. I helped with wrapping spring rolls. We had dumplings, winter melon soup, noodles, and many other dishes. After dinner, my roommate Stephanie decided to host Disney Trivia Night in our apartment. Stephanie has such a deep love of Disney and was super excited to share this with everyone. It was a blast- we teamed up in groups of two or three and went through categories and questions she had come up with on a PowerPoint, sort of like Jeopardy. We wrote our answers down on sheets of paper and graded them by ourselves after each round- yay Caltech Honor Code! : ) At the end, Steph had gotten prizes for the top three teams (from the Disney Store, of course :P). We also had chocolate fondue and other snacks for everyone. And speaking of desserts, I made mango pudding on Sunday with Erica for Hill Community Church (HCC). HCC isn’t affiliated with Caltech, but a lot of Christian students go here. We usually try to cook once a term, so we decided to prepare a Chinese New Year meal to serve after this service. Although weekend was pretty eventful, I had a lot of fun and was glad to celebrate Chinese New Year with friends here, since I wouldn’t be able to go back to Florida to celebrate with my family. I hope you had a lovely weekend as well!

新年快樂 (Happy Chinese New Year)! Jessica

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