The Vietnamese Student Association held a Lunar New Year, or Tết, celebration for students in the Stotler Lounge on Feb. 22.
The celebration was held from 5-8 p.m and was filled with various dances, games and food. VSA also provided information about the Lunar New Year to help educate attendees more on the holiday.
This year, the theme was “memories of home.” This theme was selected so attendees could recreate traditions they might have done with their families growing up.
The ceremony opened with a video to get attendees excited about the event. It showed pictures of families while students shared what Tết means to them.
Students put on dance performances, including a co-ed hat dance and silk fan and short fan dances. The silk fan represents a koi fish, and the short fan resembles a lotus flower, the national flower of Vietnam.
Mizzou Mirchi, a Bollywood fusion dance team, performed a number at the event. Kasa Tigre of the Filipino Student Association also performed.
VSA Dance Chair, sophomore Lucas Truong, spent weeks preparing the dances for this event.
“Dances have been an important part of Vietnamese culture for a long time, dating hundreds of years back,” Truong said. “So for us to bring cultural mixed with modern dances to our celebration in the present day, it means a lot to me.”
Attendees played pin the tail and other icebreaker games to win prizes, including a matcha set, VSA merchandise and a gift card for a free Raising Cane’s meal.
In past years, VSA has catered Chinese food, but this year, the organization made it a goal to make the experience as authentic as possible by catering more Vietnamese food.
In addition to catering food from around Columbia, attendees were encouraged to cook and bring their own Vietnamese food to the event. The event had traditional Vietnamese food, including pho and bún bò Huế.
Junior Savina Do appreciated the opportunity to share food with others at the event, as Vietnamese food was an important part of bonding with her mother back home.
“A lot of us are away from home, and because we live in dorms or we live in apartments, we don’t really have the time to be putting together 12-hour broths and things like that,” Do said. “But being able to come here and have it and share it with other people who don’t typically have it is just such an amazing thing.”
Education was also an important aspect of the event. The VSA board taught about the holiday and shared how to say ‘Happy New Year’ in various Asian languages. VSA students talked to their parents and learned more about the celebration to teach in the presentation.
VSA president Josie Lam emphasized the organization’s desire to balance between authenticity and accessibility at the event.
“We want to make sure that we are presenting our culture in a way that is easy to understand and inviting, and it makes people want to learn more,” Lam said. “So we’re keeping it authentic, but we also just want to make sure it’s accessible.”
Attendees were encouraged to wear either black tie or cultural wear. Many Vietnamese students wore áo dàis to the event.
“This is an opportunity to show off your heritage and your cultural identity in a way that you probably can’t in your everyday, day-to-day life,” Lam said.
VSA began event preparation in November, when they submitted their budget and found caterers.
According to Lam, this event is continuously growing every year. She also reinforced that everyone is welcome to attend the event, regardless of their heritage.
“We try to recreate that feeling of celebrating the New Year back in Vietnam, but we want to do it in a way that’s digestible to people who may not celebrate it super often or may not know anything about it, because this event is open to everyone,” Lam said.
