Photo by Ayman Wadud ’25.
Being away from family for a major holiday like Lunar New Year can be hard for international students such as Chau Anh Nguyen ’27.
But the student from Vietnam has found a new family to celebrate with at Kenyon, where about 250 people joined together Friday to ring in the Year of the Snake with food, song and cultural presentations.
“The fact that this celebration is attended not just by my fellow international friends but also the American students who I have befriended throughout the year — who appreciate me, who want to get to know my culture — it’s very touching for me,” Nguyen said.
Lunar New Year, which began this year on Jan. 29, is a major holiday celebrated in China and other Asian countries such as Vietnam, Korea and Japan. It begins with the first new moon of the lunar calendar and ends 15 days later on the first full moon.
The annual campus celebration in the Gund Commons Ballroom has become one of the College’s biggest cultural events, according to Yegor Sorokin, a program coordinator at the Center for Global Engagement (CGE).
“It’s a unique event for the community that brings so many people together,” he said.
To make sure that it stays that way, Jack Au ’73, a former Kenyon trustee who has been attending and supporting the event for more than 25 years, recently made a gift to endow a fund to help it and other cultural celebrations in perpetuity.
The son of two Chinese immigrants, Au said he is proud of his heritage and believes it is essential that international students share their culture with the larger community, which at Kenyon — to his delight — has responded by showing up in droves.
“My belief is we’re all global citizens,” he said. “We’ve all got to engage. So to meet international students and really appreciate and learn about their culture, that’s really the genesis of why I established this fund.”
The Jack Au ’73 Global Cultural Campus Experience Fund currently supports events for Lunar New Year in the winter and the Mid-Autumn Festival in the fall, but Au said his intent is that it will expand to holidays outside of Asian cultures as well.
On Friday, Au continued his practice of showing up for the event with red envelopes, traditionally filled with money and given to young people during the holiday for good luck.
Sorokin said Au’s ongoing involvement helps make the evening particularly meaningful.
“His support is just tremendous,” Sorokin said. “I go to these events and I see Jack touching the lives of so many students when he shares his story and talks to them, encourages them, inspires them. He really gets connected with them.”
This year’s celebration included performances by POCapella, a singing group comprised of people of color, and What’s K-Poppin’?, a student organization dedicated to Korean pop music, as well as students taking Chinese language classes. Dinner was provided from two Chinese restaurants in Mount Vernon, and students from around the world talked about how the holiday is celebrated back home.
Amelia Chung ’27, a New York resident whose parents emigrated from China and Hong Kong, served as emcee for this year’s event. A member of the student group Kenyon Asian Identities (KAI), Chung said the celebration is an important way to help students who may be missing their families at this time of year.
“It is a time when you (normally) return home and reunite with family members that maybe you don’t see for the rest of the year,” she said. “So bringing the entire campus together and including traditions from all these different places, it’s really special to still get to feel that sense of community and connection.”
Those qualities were especially appreciated by Nguyen in light of current events.
"These days have been difficult and confusing for international students and students of color, so I was immensely grateful to be at Friday’s Lunar New Year event, where I could gather with my friends to celebrate solidarity and hope,” she said.
In addition to CGE, Au and KAI, Friday’s event was sponsored by the Davison Fund for Student Life and Student Affairs; the departments of Modern Languages and Literatures (MLL), International Studies, and Asian and Middle East Studies; the Chinese Culture Club; and the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. It has been organized for years with the help of Jianhua Bai, professor of Chinese.