Today marks the official start of the Year of the Ox according to the Chinese lunar calendar.
The Lunar New Year, an important Chinese holiday, was celebrated at UCLA with a cultural festival held Saturday night.
Chinese Lunar New Year Cultural Night was hosted by the Chinese Students and Scholars Organization, a student-run organization.
The stage at the Tom Bradley International Hall was framed with rows of red and gold paper lanterns, and traditional music played as guests entered to take their seats in the spacious International Room.
The evening began with a traditional lion dance, where dancers took the stage outfitted in two elaborate red and gold lion costumes decorated with feathers and sequins.
Each of the lions was portrayed by two dancers, who eventually made their way up the aisles of the room, playfully approaching audience members before exiting through a side door.
The rest of the evening featured performers from UCLA faculty and students and their family members.
Max Shao, research scientist at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, took the stage to pay a piano duet with his young daughter. The two sat side by side on the piano bench, faces in mirrored expressions of concentration.
UCLA’s Chinese Music Ensemble, a student group, also performed several pieces. The group was led by Chi Li, a musician and professor in the ethnomusicology department.
Several Tibetan dance performances were presented by the UCLA Chinese Folk Dance troupe, with dancers wearing elaborate costumes with long billowing sleeves that swung around them as moved across the stage.
A Pi Ying silhouette show was given, where colorful string puppets moved behind a lit transparent screen as bright lights danced on the ceiling.
The audience never was never completely quiet during the evening, as audience members shared warm whispers and laughs throughout the performances.
Several audience members, including second-year biology student Lydia Zheng, said that a skit put on by four members of the student association was one of the most popular performances of the night. The skit was a parody of “Journey to the West,” a famed piece of 16th-century Chinese literature chronicling a fictional Buddhist monk and his quest for sacred texts.
Rather than traveling in quest of religious documents, the players in the student version traveled west to attend UCLA, overcoming obstacles such as entrance exams and the purchase of a car.
The students’ version comically chronicled the experience of international students at UCLA, earning appreciative laughs from the audience.
The performance was the favorite of the night for Zheng, who came from Guangzhou, China, to study at UCLA.
Zheng said she felt that the skit was an important point of connection between international students present at the event.
“We all have to go through that in order to study here at UCLA,” she said.
Zheng said she spent Chinese New Year alone last year and was glad to celebrate with others this year.
She compared Chinese New Year to a cross between Christmas and Thanksgiving and said it is the most important holiday in Chinese culture.
“It’s about family, tradition and lots of food,” said Linda Hsu, a fifth-year sociology student.
Bao Lei, a member of the event committee, said that the new year is celebrated in China with a week-long vacation from school and work.
It is important that Chinese students at UCLA have an opportunity to celebrate here in Los Angeles, he added.
Hsu was impressed by the professional quality of the celebration, which was organized in two weeks.
In addition to student performances, organizers also contacted professional performers from the L.A. community to appear at the event, Lei said.
The lion dance and puppet show were both performed by professionals from the area, he added.
Chancellor Gene Block also attended the event, along with Zhang Yun, Consul General of the People’s Republic of China in Los Angeles.
Both stepped on stage to draw raffle winners during the show. Block also spoke of the importance of Chinese culture to the UCLA community as a whole in an address to the audience.
During the final presentation, a solo vocal performance of “To My Motherland,” many of the night’s cast members took the stage while the audience warmly cheered.
Guests continued to speak animatedly among themselves as they poured into the lobby, recounting the spirited and engaging performances of the night.