Behind the Chinese Culture Club’s New Year festival

Lunar New Year open for all to attend.

Heritage High School’s Chinese Culture Club was founded earlier this year by students with a vision: to help spread and share Chinese culture with others.

Starting from the ground up, the club fundraised, scheduled and organized a festival in honor of the

Lunar New Year, also known as Chinese New Year, started on Jan. 22, 2023, and is celebrated in China, South Korea, Vietnam and other countries with overseas Chinese populations. Marking the beginning of spring and the start of the lunar calendar, as the lunar calendar is different from the solar Gregorian calendar, commonly used in other places of the world.

President of the club, Karina Chen (11), described their mentality for their Lunar New Year Festival as “go hard or go home.” Starting as a new club, the members had to fundraise for the event from scratch. To do so, the club participated in Food Faire at Heritage, an event where clubs sell food, hosted a spicy ramen-eating contest, and an event with TeaZenTea to earn money to put together the event.

Along with the fundraising, the coordination between the city, school district and Heritage High School’s leadership, the club’s officers and adviser all stated that the planning leading up to the event was stressful.

Nonetheless, the festival began on Feb. 4 in front of the Brentwood Library on Oak Street next to Brentwood’s weekly farmers market. The festival invited more than 10 vendors — small businesses and school clubs — to sell their items and promote. They included Euphoric Sun, Bukku’s Boutique, LV Creations, starrlightshop, Liberty High School’s Culture Shock, Heritage High School’s Korean Culture Club, Heritage’s Polynesian Culture Club, and Money Tree

Heritage High School’s Chinese Culture Club was founded earlier this year by students who want to and share Chinese culture with others.

Submitted photo wishing. The festival even featured a lion’s dance in the morning — a form of traditional Chinese dance where dancers mimic a lion’s moves in costume — performed by Lung Sing Martial Arts.

Of the many small business vendors, Euphoric Sun’s CEO and owner Sun Li said the event enabled them to “try to go to more markets” and branch out from their online stores. For some vendors, like Elizabeth Khuu, Money Tree wishing’s owner, the festival was their first time attending an inperson event.

It was a beautiful celebration of Asian culture in Brentwood and a well-put-together event by a high school club that started only a year ago.

According to Chen, “the students did most of the work” to make the event outstanding. The officers of the club, David see Club page 5A