by Andrew Lei ’27 & Ben Quach ’27
Billions of people across the globe celebrate the Lunar New Year based on the Chinese calendar – a traditional lunisolar calendar dating back to the Han Dynasty.
And with a new year comes a new zodiac, with 2025 marking the year of the snake. These serpents symbolize determination, intelligence, resilience, and a shedding transformation of the soul.
To celebrate, Bellarmine’s Chinese Culture Community, Vietnamese Student Association, Taiwanese Student Union, and Korean Student Association have come together with Notre Dame’s Chinese Cultural Club and Vietnamese Student Association to host a Lunar New Year Festival this Friday on the Bellarmine campus.
The festivities, a tradition several years in the making, will include all kinds of delicious foods, an exciting lion dance, and fun new games, including a scavenger hunt. Through hard work and collaboration, students have planned what will be an amazing time for students at Bellarmine and all across the Bay Area.
We talked with Enhua (Ignatius) Khong ‘25 and ThienToan Nguyen ’25 to hear their thoughts and hopes for the upcoming celebration of culture and community that they’ve helped to pioneer.
ThienToan Nguyen ’25 – Vietnamese Student Association
Q. What’s your role in the VSA?
A. I am part of two committees: Event, where I work with other committee members to create and coordinate events; and Community, where I create weekly presentations and activities for the meetings.
Q. What is your favorite thing about the Lunar New Year?
A. My favorite thing about the Lunar New Year is that I get a lot of money from red envelopes and visit family and friends who are busy most of the time. Another thing is all the food and whatnot that are special to this time of year like pastries and candy – for example, bánh tét.
Q. What are your thoughts on how it went last year?
A. If I remember properly, I liked last year’s event with the tug o’ war contest. Other than that, I liked that multiple schools came to Bellarmine, so I got to meet new people as well as old friends.
Q. Anything you’re looking forward to in this year’s event?
A. I am looking forward to the fun activities that the team and I worked really hard on. It is like a puzzle game that is all around campus that you and other people have to work together as a team to solve.
Q. Is there anything new or exciting happening this year?
A. There is going to be a lion dance performance done by your one and only fellow Bellarmine students from VSA and CCC.
Q. Any message you’d like to share with the public?
A. Please fill out the form on the CCC Instagram so that we can estimate how many people are coming. Also, bring food please, and spread the word!
Ignatius Khong ‘25 – Chinese Culture Communtiy
Q. What’s your role in the Chinese Culture Community?
A. Well, I’m basically the leader/”president” of the club. I kind of had this role since my sophomore year after having the courage to step up. Since then, I’ve helped trailblaze Bell’s first lion dance team that will perform this upcoming week. I’ve also been able to bring meetings back to life–after all, the point of the club isn’t just to do the stuff that like FSA does, but just to have fun with your friends and learn a bit more about yourself and your culture. I hope that when I graduate this year this club can still keep on going.
Q. What is the Lunar New Year Event?
A. Usually in Chinese culture, we celebrate Lunar New Year. The reason why it’s so important to the club especially is because it’s a way to end the year strong. For me, this is one way to do so as the club leader and get everyone to come together for Lunar New Year’s and meet. We also collab with groups like the VSA and KSA. The main importance, like I said before, is to bring more awareness to the Asian community and groups at Bellarmine. We all know that FSA is really popular for their mini cultural events, and I believe that having this Lunar New Year mixer is a great way for the Chinese club to get recognition and support other East Asian ethnicity groups as well.
Q. How did it go last year?
A. Last year’s Lunar New Year Mixer was alright. It wasn’t the best–I think we could’ve done better had we planned it out earlier, because we did it three weeks before so it was incredibly skewed. I also believe that even though last year was kind of skewed we pulled it off pretty well–a lot of people came and had fun at our games and overall it was a good time, even though there was no performance and the games were a little out of place. I believe that people still had a good time and I think that’s the most important part all in all.
Q. What are your goals for this year? What can members expect?
A. I think members right now can expect it [Lunar New Year Party] to be something much more grand, because we’ve been planning since the summer and working pretty hard with the girls. Because we worked so hard on it, we’ve done a lot of preparation work and Zoom meetings. I hope that members can expect a fun and interactive party with not just Bell boys but also Notre Dame girls and people from Pres. Another thing to look out for is the lion dance performance, which I believe is really interesting for underclassmen to see–especially those out of touch with their culture, whether you’re Chinese Vietnamese or Korean. When I was an underclassmen, I loved to watch performances like that, and I think it’s awesome Bellarmine has things like that right now. I really hope we can continue this tradition.
Q. Any changes? Anything unique?
A. Mainly the performance–previous activities were kind of scattered and like free play do your own thing. This time, we structured it in a way that FSA does and took inspiration from them–they had a structured schedule of games to have and let people interact. Me, the VSA, all the other affinity groups came up with a whole scavenger hunt around campus that you and your group can try to play!
Q. Any message you’d like to share with the public?
A. I want people to know that the CCC isn’t dead, it’s actually quite alive and is doing well with many more events coming up this semester. I want them to know that the Lunar New Year celebration is for everyone and we would be honored if they celebrated with us.
Interviews have been slightly modified for clarity and grammar.
Different cultures have different traditions, but what makes each celebration special is its unique ability to bring people together—people under various backgrounds and ethnicities, celebrating together out of love and joy.
With so many fun events planned for students in attendence, Bellarmine’s Lunar New Year Celebration is the perfect event to catalyze the optimism and opportunity of the Year of the Snake.
The Bell Online wishes a Happy Lunar New Year to all Bells! May this new year be filled with prosperity and abundance.
(Click into each of these links below to learn more about Bellarmine’s East Asian affinity groups!):
Bellarmine CCC – https://www.instagram.com/bellarmine_ccc/?g=5
Bellarmine VSA – https://www.instagram.com/bellarmine_vsa/
Bellarmine KSA – https://www.instagram.com/ksabcp/
Notre Dame CCC – https://www.instagram.com/ndsj_ccc/
Notre Dame VSA – https://www.instagram.com/ndsjvsa/