{"id":58602,"date":"2021-02-15T15:00:18","date_gmt":"2021-02-15T21:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=58602"},"modified":"2021-02-15T13:22:36","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T19:22:36","slug":"iss-and-fhsu-host-lunar-new-year-celebration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=58602","title":{"rendered":"ISS and FHSU host Lunar New Year celebration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BY CORIE LYNN
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Most Americans celebrated New Years the night of Dec. 31, but on Friday, Feb. 12, Fort Hays State University faculty and students gathered on campus for a second new year celebration – the Chinese Lunar New Year. 
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\u201cI think [Lunar New Year is] the most important [holiday] during the whole year, because, really, it\u2019s a super good chance for family to get together,\u201d said Olivia Zhang, a student from China who works in the office of International Student Services.
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According to Zhang, this holiday brings good luck and a fresh start to families. It is a fifteen-day celebration that brings together distant relatives for food, firecrackers and traditions.
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For the FHSU celebration, attendees received red envelopes filled with chocolate coins and mints and bowls of dumplings rice and spring rolls. The envelopes are typically given to children and unmarried adults for luck while the food is part of the holiday\u2019s traditional menu.
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Zhang explained that other traditions include hanging du\u00ecli\u00e1n, or papers with handwritten couplets, on either side of your door, wearing new clothes throughout the fifteen day celebration, and cleaning the house top-to-bottom.
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\u201cIt\u2019s not the best part, but it\u2019s like trying to dust old dust or ashes,\u201d she said.
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Many of the traditions of the Lunar New Year, such as wearing and decorating with the color red, lighting firecrackers and hanging lanterns, began with the belief that these things would scare away the beast Nian.
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To continue these traditions, Zhang, dressed in red, led the attendees in paper lantern crafts.
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\u201cWe don\u2019t usually make it ourselves because there are lots of professionals, and they sell it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s so pretty, so we stopped doing it by ourselves. Today we\u2019re going to do the crafts for hanging up.\u201d
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