Last Wednesday, Feb. 19, the Exhibition Hall was full of energy and excitement for the Chinese Student Association’s (CSA) Lantern Festival celebrating Chinese culture. The Lantern Festival attracted hundreds of students to engage with Chinese food, culture and celebration, with many dance team performances.
Before the event, students helped set up tables and decorations, while others helped apply make-up to the various student performers. During this time the Technique sat down with CSA co-presidents, Kathy Ye, third-year ISYE, and Jason Wang, third-year BA.
“The Lantern Festival, which is celebrated 15 days after the Chinese New Year, is a smaller festival when compared to the New Year, that marks the end of the winter holidays of the New Year season. The point of the festival is to come together and build community with friends and family while eating good traditional food, which is why we’re hosting our Lantern Festival,” Ye said.
The CSA and attendees exhibited these ideals as the Exhibition Hall filled with students and some family members who came to participate in their community. Since the event was not limited to CSA members, there were students of various ethnicities attending the event to immerse themselves in Chinese culture, one of CSA’s main goals with hosting the Lantern Festival. Ye believes that one of Tech’s strengths is students’ ability to showcase their culture and heritage and to engage with various cultures apart from their own..
“At Tech, you can bring something that is more cultural and Chinese to peers at Tech, and it builds a community in a way,” Ye said.
The Lantern Festival community also included members from other Asian organizations on campus, as well as performances from the Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) Modern Dance group.
“We really like to support each other when it comes to these kinds of events. So it’s not just the Chinese culture, but as well as other Asian cultures, Ye said.
While the event officially started at 6 p.m., the doors opened at 5 p.m. so students and family members could find their seats and converse. As students checked in, they received a red envelope, a Chinese custom during festivals and holidays. Inside the envelope were a couple of raffle tickets and a fortune. The raffle prizes included popular items like a Dyson Hairdryer, an iPad and a Lego Money Tree. Many students were eager to earn more raffle ticket entries by playing games like cup pong and picking up items with chopsticks within a certain time limit.
The two student co-hosts started the event by instructing attendees to head over to receive their food, which consisted of a wide variety of authentic Chinese dishes. Once everyone had received their food, the performances began.
The night started with a performance from the Filipino Student Association (GT FSA) performing the Tinikling, a traditional Philippine folk dance that involves two people beating and tapping bamboo poles on the ground or against each other while two dancers step in and over them. The quick dance and the tapping of the bamboo sticks immediately got the crowd clapping in rhythm. After that performance, VSA’s Modern Dance team performed to a mix of English music and Chinese music, which built on the audience’s energy from the previous performance.
Various dance styles and performances were placed next to each other, displaying the richness and diversity of Asian culture. After VSA Modern Dance, GT Dragon Flyers performed with diabolos, a type of glowing yo-yo. The jugglers used two sticks with a string connecting them to rotate the yo-yo while performing tricks. Similar to the previous two, this was a high-intensity performance since they spun the diabolos so quickly and threw them to great heights. The audience contrasted audible gasps and cheers after a cool trick to jaw-dropping silence..
This performance was followed by a solo performance by Lily Gao, first-year BA, as she played the hulusi, a free reed wind instrument. Afterwards, Gao said, “I wanted to participate in the festival because I wanted to celebrate Chinese culture.”
After the calming and melodic solo performance, GT Dragon Dance performed with dancers dressed up as “Squid Game” characters. The dancers created shapes like a star with the body of the dragon, in addition to other tricks like rotating the body so the dragon looked like it was continuously spiralling.
The final performances included CSA’s Traditional Dance team and GT Seoulstice, Tech’s Korean Modern dance team. Each dance team, both within and outside CSA, showcased the unity and cultural acceptance that is amplified at Tech.
Two representatives from Auburn University’s Chinese American Student Association (CASA) also attended the festival since they founded their association about a month ago. The attendees, Vincent Lin and Jenny Ngo gushed over how much they enjoyed the Lantern Festival and how well-orchestrated it was.
“Due to a recently passed bill in Alabama that restricts funding to cultural organizations, it has been a lot harder to help create CASA in Auburn, so it is really cool to see it thriving here,” Lin said.
“Since we created CASA about a month ago, we wanted to support Tech’s CSA and reach out to other CSAs and CASAs in the southeast to bring a community,” Ngo added.
After talking to the two students from Auburn, it is easy to see how important it is to represent one’s culture on campus and how lucky students at Tech are to be able to continue to do so. The Lantern Festival shows that attending cultural events from both one’s own culture and different ones fosters community.
“It’s that one event that you can bring people together, in a sense that because everyone is so busy with their classes, schedules, and life, the festival can be a getaway from all these things allowing students and friends to come, even with their family members as a community,” Wang said.