Lunar New Year Celebrated at Kean

Kean University celebrated the Lunar New Year at the Miron Student Center on Thursday, January 26 with festivities to ring in the Year of the Rooster. Performers captivated the crowd with the lively and colorful Dances of the Dragon and Lion, a traditional part of the Lunar New Year celebration, and revelers enjoyed food and music from Asian cultures.

For the approximately 100 students from Wenzhou-Kean University (WKU) currently studying at Kean USA, the celebration had special significance.

“We are able to enjoy the New Year while we are so far away from home,” said Shengda Zhou, the president of the student group WKUSA and a finance major from Ningbo, China, “I usually get red packets (gifts of money wrapped in red paper) for the New Year, but I didn’t get any this year. Still, I am celebrating the Year of the Rooster.”

Anyone born in the Year of the Rooster is considered hardworking, resourceful, courageous and talented. In Asia, the Lunar New Year is a time for family celebrations. For Ken Lin from Wenzhou, China – a WKU student and an officer with WKUSA – the Kean community became his family.

"It's my first time celebrating the Chinese New Year in America and it's very different,” he said. “It's very good to see these kinds of activities here. The celebration was very traditional."

Senior William Harrison, an Asian Studies major who studied at WKU last fall, says the celebration brought the Kean community together.

"I'm happy to be part of it and meet the new Chinese students from Wenzhou,” he said. “We are able to give them a part of their home.”

Wenzhou-Kean University, Kean’s additional location in Zhejiang Province, China, had its first graduating class in May 2016. Offering Kean’s world-class education with all classes taught in English, WKU gives Chinese students an opportunity to receive a western-style university education in China, and offers Kean USA students a chance to study abroad in the country that has the second-largest economy in the world.