Year of the Dog gets leg up with booming bash

Ting Wang greeted friends as she celebrated the Chinese New Year for the first time in… Ting Wang greeted friends as she celebrated the Chinese New Year for the first time in America. While a pre-recorded taping of the traditional Chinese New Year Program blared from the ballroom of the William Pitt Union, she watched and remembered gathering around the television with her family at home as part of their tradition.

People came together to celebrate the Chinese New Year at Pitt Friday, welcoming 2006 as the “Year of the Dog.”

Organized by the Chinese Students and Scholars Association and the Office of International Studies, the event included a Chinese coffee house, a Chinese dinner buffet and a stage show that featured traditional Chinese dances, martial arts, music and fashion.

“The Chinese New Year is about assembling family members no matter where you are,” Wang, a CSSA volunteer and post-doctoral student at Pitt, said as she anticipated calling home to her parents.

The Chinese New Year – also known as the Lunar New Year or the Spring Festival, is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays, according to www.wikipedia.org. It is a 15-day celebration that begins on the day of the second new moon after the winter solstice on the Chinese calendar and ends with the Lantern Festival.

Although China’s real New Year had been celebrated a week ago on Jan. 29, CSSA could not hold its event that week. With at least 1,000 people in attendance, CSSA used three rooms – the ballroom, Kurtzman and assembly rooms – to hold one of its biggest events of the school year.

CSSA member Xiaojing Wang said the event took months of preparation. The organization even had to place a call to China so it could get the China Central Television New Year program, she said.

Although she said it was unfortunate that they could not have the program broadcasted live, she was still pleased with the outcome of the event. Because the Chinese New Year is an important holiday that is usually spent with family, Wang said that having the event after the real New Year worked out well.

“This is the big school-wide party we want to share with you guys,” she said.

As part of the Chinese New Year tradition, Wang said that people socialize a lot in “greeting each other in the New Year.”

Most families have a big dinner at midnight that includes fish and chicken, because the pronunciation of these words sounds the same as fortune and luck in Chinese.

“My family isn’t here, so I celebrated with my friends,” Wang said. “We are a good substitute for each other’s families.”

Ting Yuan and Shanshan Cui, models in the fashion show, also celebrated the New Year with friends, making traditional dishes such as dumplings. Yuan said that although she is away from her home country, she does not feel lonely during the holiday.

Yuan and Cui modeled their own traditional clothing to represent the dresses and robes worn by Chinese women on special occasions. Yuan explained that it is usual for Chinese women to bring the robes with them when they travel just in case they get invited to a party and want to show others that they are “always proud of their tradition.”

“It’s a chance for Chinese students to demonstrate traditional culture to Americans,” she said about the fashion show.

Shengnan (Shane) Wu, the president of CSSA and a Pitt graduate student, also demonstrated traditional Chinese dress, wearing a black silk embroidered jacket and matching pants. Hurrying from the stage show program to the ballroom, Wu welcomed guests.

“We just want to let the community know we are very friendly and open to share culture with American people,” Wu said. “And show the community what the real Chinese culture is.”