Sunday marks the Chinese New Year, and ISU students will be celebrating with festivities at the Chinese New Year Celebration this weekend in the Bone Student Center.

The event will be taking place in the Brown Ballroom with shopping, dancing, singing, music, martial arts, raffle ticket drawings and festivals.

There will be festival markets from 3-5:30 p.m. at the beginning of the event, and there will be programs that have a lot to offer throughout the night.

“Hosting this event is a very good opportunity to promote the reputation of ISU among those people and a good way to enrich after school life,” Paul Qiu, senior accounting major, said.

 Qiu is the president of the ISU Chinese Student and Scholar Association and is a Coordinator of Events and Master of Ceremonies for the event.

This celebration began 12 years ago, and this year is the year of the snake. Dr. Ruifang Cao from Heartland Community College started the event due to the large Asian community on campus and around town, as well as a great way to promote the culture.

“She has been dedicated in promoting Chinese culture around the local community for more than 20 years,” Qiu said.

The event has become very popular over the years. Last year there were more than 500 people in attendance and more are expected this year.

The event does not only pertain to the Chinese. Countries including Japan and Korea also celebrate Chinese New Year as they all use the same lunar calendar. The event will be branching out to a large group of people.
             
The celebration is made possible through the sponsors, which include ISU International House, State Farm Insurance and Heartland Community College.            

Members from the Organization of Chinese Americans help with the celebration, most of which are State Farm employees and help bring in the sponsors for the event. Other students volunteer to help with the event and are not just from ISU but also Heartland and the community.

The biggest sponsor for this event is ISU International House, and the support of the office that make the event possible.

“The biggest reason is the ISU International House feels the burden of supporting the interactions between the university and local community,” Qiu said.

The Chinese New Year celebration will have a dragon dance, lion dance, drum dance and the traditional Chinese dance.

New to this year’s celebration will be a professional group performing tap dance, performances by students from local Chinese school and ballet dance. The event will not only be a great way to learn about the Chinese culture, but will also be a great way to bring in a new year.