A crowd of students flocked to Rice University’s Fondren Library to partake in a bevy of activities for the annual Lunar New Year celebration Jan. 29.
It didn’t take long for lines to stack up in the Fondren’s lobby as students took turns designing holiday greeting cards, creating festive lanterns, tasting traditional Chinese candies, seeing how many M&Ms they could pick up with chopsticks and much more.
“Lunar New Year is an important holiday in many Asian countries that has a very significant cultural importance, so we want to celebrate that here,” said Jane Zhao, director of the digital media commons at the Fondren and organizer of the event. “We’re happy to see so many people show up.
“It’s been so much fun, and it makes the celebration much more meaningful when I see students celebrating with us. It’s a celebration for the whole community.”
For Hanyang Chen, a freshman majoring in electrical and computer engineering, Lunar New Year brings people together.
“It’s a time to celebrate the accomplishments of the year. To me, that’s really what it means,” Chen said.
“I think this is a great way to raise awareness because Rice is such a diverse place, and there’s so many different cultures. It’s great that people from all kinds of different backgrounds can participate in activities like this and get to understand different cultures more.”
