Celebrating Lunar Year in the Wake of Discrimination

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 what the Asian community was going through at that time, like from the white students on campus was really disheartening. It truly is difficult to not feel frustrated sometimes.”

Due to Winterfest being held on the actual Lunar New Year, Davidson’s official celebration was pushed to February 9.

To be a Chinese student at Davidson can be “very difficult,” as described by Zhang. In this way, Lunar New Year holds even more gravity as a community-based event.

“Celebrations like Lunar New Year are a time where you can kind of put away the hate for a little while,” said Meigs. “You just really appreciate the community that you have.

While the celebration welcomes the entire Davidson community, it really is something we do so our Asian students feel like they are more at home here.”

For the average Davidson first year, going to college begins a difficult journey towards self-discovery. However, international students, along with the journey of socially and emotionally ‘finding themselves,’ must, as Zhang delineates, embark upon a physical journey away from their home culture, tradition, and other those who have an “understanding of the experience. For Zhang, the Lunar New Year offers an ability to remember “how charming her culture is” and remember her “culture is not absent at Davidson.”

“Being Chinese—it’s my identity, and it’s a part of me,” states Zhang. “Lunar New Year reminds me of how the Chinese part of me here is still really vivacious. Yes, I’m hungry. The celebration just connects me to who I am here and who I am back home. I’ve been feeling I have changed too much. I’ve been trying hard to make that make sense. But Chinese New Year is a thread that connects both parts of me—my culture is not absent here. I can find it and people are accepting of it too.”

Despite Winterfest, students managed to celebrate Lunar New Year on their own in an attempt to replicate experiences with their familes.

“Four or five years ago, in China, during the New Year, you would not hear a single second of silence at night,” shares Zhang. “There were fireworks all the time. It is a time when kids are all downstairs from the apartment buildings and looking up and it is just pure, happiness and, and reunion. Last year, in Davidson, during a South Asian Indian festival event, they bought a lot of fireworks. I was about to cry just seeing those people standing there and watching. Like it’s just childhood. Although it was not my festival, it was beautiful. It was the Lunar New Year kind of feeling and it was beautiful.”

This act of coming togetheris not just an act of celebration. Rather, for both PASA and the Chinese Culture Club, building community is a necessity to everyday life.

“Home is a very difficult thing to carve out at Davidson,” states Meigs. “But the Asian community at Davidson, while we know we’re small in number, we are strong.”