Move over, “Auld Lang Syne”: GPS’s Lunar New Year celebration featured martial arts demonstrations, dancing and plenty of delicious food from across Asia
For anyone already wishing that a new year would start, they were in luck in mid-February: students at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) rang in the Lunar New Year, which is celebrated in numerous countries across East and Southeast Asia.
The GPS Lunar New Year Festival was organized by the Graduate Organization of GPS and the four Asia-related clubs at the school: Asameshikai, dedicated to appreciating Japanese culture; China Focus; Mannam, the Korean culture club at GPS; and SEAL, the Southeast Asia Link.
Tiffany Liu, the president of GO GPS, coordinated the event and served as the emcee of the event, introducing different student groups who contributed to the celebrating the beginning of the Year of the Horse, as this year is classified according to the Chinese Zodiac.
“Through performances, activities and food, we wanted to share and celebrate our cultures with the student body and our community,” she said.
To that end, the event featured dance performances by the university’s Chinese Dance Association and the Samahan Philippine Dance Company.
The UC San Diego Kendo Club also demonstrated a form of Japanese martial arts, which is derived from samurai swordsmanship and sees opponents face off against each other with bamboo swords (while wearing armor, of course).
Members of the GPS community were also able to take in the different cultures through taste and smell with foods that represented Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean and Southeast Asian cuisine. After everyone partook of glass noodle salad, kimbap, japchae and drunken noodles (plus a host of other foods), the meal was rounded out with mochi donuts, a Japanese treat.
The new year celebrations were emblematic of the many different clubs and student groups available for GPS students to join, whether they’re looking to connect with peers over a shared identity or to get involved more deeply with an area of academics outside of the classroom.
Everyone in the GPS community was welcome to attend the event, affirming the school as a place where different cultures and backgrounds connect — a value that is all the more important given the school’s focus on the Asia-Pacific and Mexico.
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