On Monday evening, February 19, 2007, the MBA Association along with many student volunteers from the Asian community hosted the celebration of Chinese Lunar New Year for fellow students, faculty, and staff.

The Atrium of the Business Building took on a festive appearance as the students adorned the stairways with diamond-shaped pieces of red paper depicted with ‘lucky’ characters, Chinese lanterns, and Spring Couplets. The evening began with a presentation by Jessica Ho and Yao Wang who shared the origin of the Lunar New Year. It seems that many many years ago there was a monster called “Nian” who would make an appearance as the year end was coming and would eat the people it saw. It was realized that “Nian” was afraid of red color and big noise; thus, began the traditions of decorating their homes all in red and setting off fireworks to make loud noise. Other aspects of the new year celebration were shared with fellow students and a traditional Chinese feast was enjoyed by all. The evening concluded with a Chinese song being sung by one of our current Indian students, Shakuntala Khandhaduri.

The year 2007 is “The Year of Golden Pig” which comes every 60 years, means good luck/easy to get a lot of treasure and will bring extreme luck!

Diwali, the Indian festival of lights, was celebrated October 17, 2006 with an event run by the Indian student population of the MBA program. Students, faculty, and staff were treated to a buffet of traditional Indian foods which included daal makhani, naan, samosas, and gulab jamun.

The event showcased dancing, singing, and a slideshow of India along with a presentation about the history and traditions of Diwali.

Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the traditional holidays in East and Southeast Asia It is basically a family holiday, like Thanksgiving in the United States. Family members get together, enjoy dinner and mooncakes, watch the moon.

This year, for all of those students away from home, they did not have the chance to celebrate the family holiday with their families. However, they held the Moon Party on October 6, 2006 and celebrated it with their Smeal family. More than forty people attended and many of the students brought their significant others. They enjoyed the delicious mooncakes, made by Ken Cheng and his wife. Yao Wang and her husband made chicken wings. They also enjoyed other snacks and food and shared the romantic stories about the Mid-Autumn Festival. They had a lot of fun.

The Legend of the Mooncake:
Mooncake is one of the traditional Chinese foods throughout China. It is said that when China was governed by the Mongolian "Yuan" Dynasty, people could hardly live and decided to overthrow the government. However, they could not send out the information because of strict supervision. People then wrote rebellion messages on small papers and placed the papers into the mooncakes. Soon, the messages spread over the whole country and the people successfully turned over the Mongolian throne and rebuilt a new government. Later, people started to eat mooncakes to commemorate this event.