As Wednesday Jan. 29 marked the Lunar New Year, multiple clubs at RM held celebrations that week—filled with food, history and a strong sense of community—to honor the culture and traditions that surround the more than 2000-year-old holiday.
RM’s Southeast Asian Club held a Lunar New Year potluck, along with the Jaguar Scholars Leadership Program, Tuesday Jan. 28. While JSLP is a largely Latino club, it is inclusive of and celebrates the importance of all cultures. Senior and SEA president Francis Paloma said “The idea was… spreading culture and celebrating the Lunar New Year and putting into the spotlight outside of Eurocentric ideas of what even Chinese and Lunar New Year is.”
Paloma, who is Filipino-American, founded the club with his friends senior Nhi Le, who is Vietnamese, and senior Thant Nyan, who is Burmese. “We were experiencing something very similar around sophomore year where we started having an identity crisis of what we are as Asian Americans. We didn’t feel like a lot of what’s being pushed on us—there’s a dominant Asian culture of the Chinese—really applied to us,” he said. “So we founded the Southeast Asian Club to spread our own culture…bring more food, have more people, have more dialogue, have more talks.”
Paloma says that with his conflicting identity as an Asian-American, a lot of the pressure he faces comes from a stereotypical image of “Asian,” as wealthy Chinese. “When I talk about my cultural conflicts, a lot of it stems not from a racial but rather class qualm, where, within Montgomery County, to be Asian American, to many people… means to be Chinese. And to be Chinese here often means… especially within the IB program, that you’re being pulled from upcounty with parents who are… rich,” he said. “From a class perspective, me and my friend, we come from lower socioeconomic classes, from the Southeast Asian identity, and we just didn’t feel like it was easy to mix with that.”
Because he is Filipino, Paloma says that personally, he’s never experienced Lunar New Year in childhood as it was never celebrated within his family. “But living in Montgomery County, being surrounded by Asians, being put into this label… of being Asian American, I’ve been, for the past six years of my life, accepting Lunar New Year as somewhat of my own culture, even though it hasn’t been historically,” he said.
He also attended the Thursday Jan. 30 Lunar New Year potluck hosted by Asian American Club. “As much as I speak about further accurate identification of your racial identity as a Southeast Asian person, it is very important to understand the broader context that no matter what, the Asian man is always in an oppressed group within America,” Paloma said. “And it’s just very good to celebrate other cultures, and understand that we as a country and where we live now is a very diverse group, and celebrate those differences.”
AAC has been a club at RM since the 20th century. Senior and president Emily Shao joined the club in her sophomore year because she wanted to discuss the unique issues that the Asian American community faces. The club meets every other week and during meetings, members celebrate Asian culture by watching Asian film and eating traditional snacks. They also hold the annual Lunar New Year Party and in May, they make daily social media posts honoring significant members of the AAPI community.
The ambience at the celebration was joyous—a video about the history of the holiday played on the board, traditional music filled the room and a crowd of hungry students surrounded a row of desks filled with different dishes. There were a variety of foods at the potluck including chicken sandwiches, prawn crackers, xiao mahua, a traditional chinese snack, matcha, cookies and desserts. Many other members also contributed their own dishes.
Shao, who is Chinese-American, says that her favorite part of the celebration is receiving red packets filled with money from her relatives. She brought homemade lo mein, a recipe she learned from her parents, her way to contribute to the highlighting of Asian Culture. “I feel like there’s not a lot of recognition and I just wanted to bring it to light and just celebrate a bunch of people that were similar to me in identity.”
Junior and AAC vice president Kimberly Lee joined the club as a Korean-American. “I’ve always been interested in encouraging others to learn more about Asian American culture and different Asian ethnicities and different traditions,” she said. “Within RM, there’s an Asian community. And even for those who aren’t in the Asian community, those who want to learn more about Asian culture, traditions and history can come to the club to learn more about that, as well as enjoy the food. So I think that’s why it was so important for us to host this.”
She brought traditional shrimp chips to the potluck that are “representative” of Asian culture. “I think a lot of Asian cultures have a lot more seafood based kind of snacks. So I was really excited to bring that,” she said. Personally, her favorite part of Lunar New Year, (called Seollal in Korea) is the “really good food,” and “having fun with other people, enjoying family, company and friends.”
RM’s National Chinese Honor Society hosted a separate celebration Friday Jan. 31. Seniors James Zhang and Angelina Nguyen-Nhu are co-presidents of NCHS. “We tried to spread Chinese culture and awareness for these kinds of holidays by hosting these lunches and events, in addition to the Lunar New Year lunch where, you know, it’s just kind of a community,” Zhang said. NCHS hosts a variety of events like field trips to Chinese museums with a goal of promoting awareness of Chinese culture and values.
The lunch was paid for through a grant that NCHS applied for, though the club lost roughly $175. Zhang said, “We’re not concerned about the losses, not because we don’t have to cover it but because we were able to get together and celebrate an important Chinese holiday.” Zhang and Nguyen–Nhu worked to organize and set up the event, ordering different dishes like beef and broccoli, orange chicken and dumplings from Mandarin Express and passing them out to students.
Nguyen-Nhu believes that “it’s important for students at RM to celebrate and be aware of the Lunar New Year and Chinese culture in general because RM is a very diverse school with students that celebrate a lot of different cultures.” As half Vietnamese and half Chinese, she joined NCHS as a way to connect with Chinese culture after hearing about it while she was in ninth grade. Her family celebrates the new year by going to her grandparent’s house and eating dinner there, exchanging red envelopes and playing games.
Senior Kevin Yam’s favorite traditions to celebrate the new year include blowing up firecrackers and eating food with family and friends. “Lunar New Years, especially in America, is representative of Chinese culture and just Asian culture,” Yam said. “We don’t really have a lot of big holidays like Christmas or Thanksgiving, so this is the one time of the year that all Asian people, Chinese people, can really just gather round and share their culture and just share traditions with other people and not only family.”
Also in attendance at the celebration was junior Hali Duong. Some of her family’s Lunar New Year traditions include going to Buddhist temples, eating traditional Vietnamese foods and giving red envelopes. Every year her family prays to their ancestors, giving them offerings and lighting incense sticks for them. She also enjoys eating bánh chưng, which is a dish made with sticky rice, fried spring rolls and boiled duck for new years.
Although RM doesn’t have a Vietnamese association, Duong says that the cultural clubs in the school have helped her to become more comfortable with her background and identity. “Just being around other Vietnamese people, talking, that really helps me and that also makes me feel empowered and encouraged to continue keeping these traditions and cultures,” she said. “These clubs are what build our communities… [they’re] really really great because they help students find their own communities.”
