As the Lunar New Year approached, DVHS student-led cultural clubs, the Chinese Student Association(CSA) and Vietnamese Student Association(VSA), collaborated to host the first Lunar New Year Festival at DVHS on Feb. 7th.
“We just want to emphasize and [raise] awareness about our culture [and the] different cultures here on campus.” Kei Vo, the vice president of VSA explained.
As for the reason VSA chose to collaborate with CSA, the representation of Southeast and East Asian cultures played a role.
“Obviously, we have [school clubs] for the Indian students and the South Asian students at our school,” Vo said. “But we don’t really have anything for the Southeast Asian or East Asian students at our school. So I feel like that was the main reason why [VSA] decided to [collaborate] with CSA.”
This is the first time that VSA and CSA collaborated, both intending to spread Asian culture and emphasize the importance of Asian culture in the DVHS community.
Planning started last semester for VSA. Even when VSA was just created, still in the process of figuring everything out, VSA President KayleeTang had a vision for having a Lunar New Festival at DVHS. To get ready, she choreographed a traditional Vietnamese dance, an activity that dates back to her childhood.
“I went to a temple and I was there since I was little,” Tang explained. “I’ve been there for a while so they introduced me to a lot of dances and a lot of cultural things for Vietnamese.”
Starting from two months before the actual day, practice sessions were held for VSA club members during lunch or after school. For the days near the actual performances, Saturdays were also another time for practice sessions.
Despite preparing early, when the festival day was approaching, anxiety and stress started to kick in for the club officers due to an outside factor: the weather. Days before the performance, light sprinkles to showers rained down from the sky, threatening to cancel the festival altogether.
“We’ve been praying [for] the weather. It’s been rainy, right? And I’ve always just been checking the weather app,” said Tang.
The weather did eventually cause club officers to move the festival back by one day, having the festival on Feb. 8 as compared to the original specified date of Feb. 7.
Regardless of the change, on the newly decided date, the festival was able to attract student attention. Starting from the beginning of lunch, a line of students stood in line along a row of white tables where food items were given out. A poster was placed on the first table of the row, featuring the food items for the festival.
There were a total of five food items, consisting of traditional Vietnamese food such as mung bean cake, sesame balls, and che tai, a Vietnamese fruit dessert. Among the list of five, egg rolls and banh minh, a Vietnamese sandwich consisting of a baguette and filling, ran out within 15 minutes of the lunch period.
Aside from food, VSA was able to perform the dance that they had prepared for two months. During the performance, members of the club were dressed in elaborate costumes with brightly colored patterns. Flowers were a common theme, a pattern featured in multiple member’s costumes. For the music, DVHS Leadership cooperated by blasting Vietnamese music in the background.
“For sure,” Tang responded when asked if there would be another Lunar New Year Festival next school year. “Hopefully, we hope to expand it too.”
