A Chinese New Year celebration put on by various groups on Friday brought together 169 Chinese students, their American friends and Ball State faculty in recognition of the new Chinese Year of the Dragon.
The event at the Westminster Presbyterian Church consisted of a banquet serving traditional Chinese food, performances of songs and dances, games and skits. There were musical performances on three traditional Chinese instruments: the ehru, the guzheng and the sheng.
Kenneth Holland, dean of the Rinker Center for International Programs, said the event was put on by Ball State, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association as well as the Muncie Chinese Christian Fellowship as a way of acknowledging and appreciating the Chinese students at school.
"We provide services to all the international students," Holland said. "We want the students to feel at home in Muncie. So, this is a way of integrating the students into the community."
China Initiative Coordinator Po Hu said that with 282 Chinese students enrolled at Ball State, they make up the highest percentage of foreign students from a single country at the university.
"We have students from many different countries ... and the largest groups come from certain countries like India, Korea, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia," Holland said. "So we try to help them organize events ... to celebrate their nationality — their country."
Yixuan Peng and Mengtian Li are two Chinese students at Ball State who attended the event and said they came to celebrate the important holiday. They said that being here in America means they can't go home for the holidays.
"We celebrate Chinese Festival every year and in China [I would] watch TV with my family but while we're here we don't do that," Peng said. "We only celebrate the festival with our friends, that's all."
Hu said that Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, is comparable to the importance of Christmas in America. He also explained why Chinese New Year is different than America's New Year.
China has a history going back more than 5,000 years, he said. During all that time, the Chinese studied the moon and the sun and realized that basing their calendar off the changes in the moon made the most sense, he added.
"[With a] lunar calendar, normally, the new year starts in the middle or late January or the early of February," he said.
Hu went on to explain that the Chinese New Year is more often referred to as the Spring Festival in China because it is around the time when China starts to enter spring. Right now, most of China is getting warmer and shifting from winter to spring, signaling the beginning of the new year, the Year of the Dragon, Hu said.
Every year is given a different animal from the Chinese zodiac to represent it. According to travelchinaguide.com, there are 12 animals of the zodiac: the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.
Hu said that the dragon is associated with many desirable traits in China, adding that many couples in China wish to have a child this year because it is believed that whatever year a child is born in, they will have the traits of the zodiac animal representing that year.
"In Chinese culture, dragon means strength," Hu said. "It means power and fortune. But in American culture, it may mean something evil or greedy or you know those things. People will never know until they find some friends from China — until they talk to Chinese students and faculty, until they come to such [an] event, to experience a different culture."
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