Chinese New Year celebrations underway

Packed tightly into the cozy Asian Culture Center on 10th Street, Chinese New Year celebrators gathered Friday night to enjoy an evening of food and fun.\nAs the Year of the Pig begins, many Asian organizations across campus, including the Vietnamese Student Association, the Taiwanese Student Association, the Hong Kong Student Association and the Asian American Association are hosting events to ring in the New Lunar Year. The New Year began Sunday.\nBabita Upadhyay, the program and administrative assistant of ACC, said the annual Hot Pot Open House event has been hosted by the ACC since the 2000. \nUpadhyay said hot pot, a popular style of cooking in China, Vietnam and Korea, consists of a boiling pot of broth at the center of the dining table. While the hot-pot stock is simmering, ingredients such as shrimp, leafy vegetables, noodles and sliced meat are thrown into the pot and cooked at the table.\nKristopher Stephens, a junior who had never been to an ACC event before Friday, said this was the first time he had tried or seen hot-pot cooking. While he enjoyed the food, Stephens said he will definitely come back next year, not necessarily for the cooking, but for the people.\n“I love Chinese food but I also like the people and the atmosphere,” he said.\nHe said he even plans on making an effort to visit the ACC regularly just to learn about Asian cultures.\n“I learned a lot,” Stephens said. “So I definitely want to come back when there’s not as much hustle and bustle.”\nThe Lunar New Year is considered to be one of the important holidays in China. The Chinese New Year falls on different days each year because the holiday begins on the first day of a new year that has a new moon. The celebration ends 14 days later, on the day of the Lantern Festival.\nWith every New Year, an animal is named after it. This year is the Year of the Pig.\nFor international graduate student Yi-Ling Lin, Chinese New Year is considered to be the most important holiday in her home country of Taiwan. Now that she is at IU, she said she will not be able to celebrate the New Year traditionally by setting off fireworks with her siblings, but said she appreciates the efforts the ACC made to celebrate Chinese New Year. \n“Even though I am not in Taiwan and cannot celebrate like how I usually do back home, the ACC event has made it a little easier,” Lin said. “Hot pot was an important part of celebrating the New Year. This makes me feel a little more at home.”