Lunar New Year, also known as the Spring Festival in China, is a 15-day celebration marking the beginning of a new year on the lunisolar calendar, and the arrival of spring. Last week, the Asian American Student Union (AASU) and the Office of Graduate & Graduate Student Life (OGISL) held a sold-out 2025 Lunar New Year celebration in the German Club Ballroom.

The celebration has been traced back roughly 3,500 years ago and it’s largely celebrated by countries in Asia, and by Asian communities across the world, typically celebrated with red decorations, firework shows, family gatherings, and by exchanging of gifts, often a red envelope filled with money which symbolizes luck and good wishes. Each year is represented by an animal and element, and this year it’s the Wood Snake.

The university’s celebration opened with a Golden Lion dance, where performers wear lion costumes and mimic the movements of a lion, before a welcoming message from Director of OGISL, Steve Macchiarolo, director of the Office of Graduate & Graduate Student Life.

The celebration included a variety of vocal, art, dance, and martial arts performances. The music included traditional Chinese instruments such as the erhu, a bowed instrument with two strings which is often compared to violins, and the guzheng, a plucked zither from China. Music ranged from traditional folk songs such as “Spring is Coming,” to modern-day pop songs such Bruno Mars’ “APT.”.

Feifei Yang played the erhu. In China, her work earned her a Gold Medal at the Beijing National New Talent Competition, and she is a dual 2017 Global Music Award winner. Yang has performed in a number of places, including Barclays Center and The General Assembly Halle. Yang performed four pieces, and was accompanied by Vanessa Wu on the yangqin, which is similar to a dulcimer.

Also performing was Wei Guzheng, a member of the China National Instrumental Association, The International Guzheng Association, and is co-founder of trio bands, StringsW and Miss. She is the principal guzheng performer for the Chinese National Orchestra in New York, and has been invited to play at the Lincoln Center, Columbia University and Flushing Town Hall.

As of March 2022, Guzheng has also been performing in the Broadway musical, “Noble Family,” a romantic musical by Chinese-born composer Cecilia Lin, a four-time China Music Award winner, which opened in New York and Beijing.
In between the 14 performances were presentations that explained the holiday, and trivia games with the traditional red envelopes as prizes.

Len Diamond, campus Asian American Student Union president, filled in for Dr. Henry C. Lee, because he was in China, could not serve in his usual role as presenter.