Michelle Hong, a first-year biology student, watched in awe as red and gold lions raced up aisles and onto the stage, dancing around the perimeter of the Ackerman Grand Ballroom.
Hong, along with an audience of approximately 200 people, came to see the Vietnamese Language and Culture Club’s 15th annual Tet festival.
Tet, a Vietnamese holiday, celebrates and welcomes the Vietnamese New Year, marking the end of the lunar calendar and the beginning of a new one in Vietnamese tradition.
The program on Sunday night was divided into two parts.
Booths occupying the ballroom offered information about Vietnamese culture while also serving traditional Vietnamese dishes, including rice cakes with fish sauce, bean-flavored sticky rice with raisins, fried noodles, fried rice and egg rolls.
The event featured games like dominoes as well as a version of craps where players bet on images rather than numbers.
A few Vietnamese cultural performances followed the games.
A drama tied the performances together by depicting the traditional story of a mother teaching her unenthusiastic son about Tet and Vietnamese culture.
The play also featured singing and dancing, often illustrating elegant and traditional Vietnamese dress and showcasing the Vietnamese tradition of poetic flirtations between men and women.
The finale included the traditional practice of lion dancing, during which the lions danced up the aisles of the grand ballroom and onto the stage.
“Tet shows the depth of Vietnamese culture. Not only how we celebrate festivals, but also the food that we eat, and how we interact with one another,” said Eileen Truong, a first-year art history student and organizer of the Tet festival.
“I found that Vietnamese and Chinese cultures are very similar,” Hong said.
“As a Chinese American, I was able to relate to the drama that was performed. I also noticed that both of our cultures share the lunar calendar.”
This year the celebration of the New Year officially falls on Jan. 26. The new year marks an end to a year of change for first-year students within the Vietnamese Language and Culture Club.
Most did not know at this time last year where they would go to college, let alone find a community within UCLA to connect with, Truong said.
Participating in the Tet festival has given the first-year participants the ability to connect with the campus as well as their culture throughout their first quarter as Bruins,
“Vietnamese Language and Culture Club has given me a really close knit group of friends to hang out,” said Amanda Dao, a first-year neuroscience student. “We (the Vietnamese Language and Culture Club) may be small but it feels like a family to me. We all know each other and we all hang out with each other on a daily basis.”
Being the organizer of the Tet festival allowed Truong to meet a variety of people.
“I was able to get really close to people in a way that is normally difficult for a first year,” Truong said.
Although Vietnamese Language and Culture Club helped Dao and Truong connect, Dao says ultimately the Tet festival was about the celebration and the audience.
“I hope that the audience learned that there was a lot to Vietnamese culture,” Dao said. “I hope people learned that you don’t have to be Vietnamese to join us and appreciate our work.”