The ASU Mandarin Chinese program said “Xin nian kuaile,” or “Happy New Year,” in unison for the first time Sunday evening.

About 90 faculty members and students performed dances, skits, songs and music and partook in traditional Chinese cuisine at ASU’s first officially organized Chinese New Year celebration on the Tempe campus.

“Chinese New Year is the most important traditional Chinese holiday,” said Patty Pang, the Chinese instructor who coordinated the event along with other language faculty members and students. “The meaning, the significance is as high as [America’s emphasis on] Christmas. But Christmas has religious meaning. But the Chinese New Year is purely, only [based in] tradition, culture.”

Chinese students and faculty have celebrated the Chinese New Year privately for the past 14 years, Pang said. But this year marked the first organized gathering of all Chinese sections, thanks in part to funding from the Confucius Institute at Arizona State University.

The Institute was established in 2007 as a direct partnership with Sichuan University in China to promote the study of Chinese language and culture at colleges and in the general public, according to the Confucius Institute at ASU’s Web site.

Entertainment at the celebration included a traditional yo-yo dance exposition, several Shao Lin Kung-Fu performances, karaoke with a Chinese pop song and Chinese 102 students and a short skit written and staged completely in Mandarin by three of Pang’s Chinese 202 students.

Jason Loose, one of the skit actors and a Chinese language sophomore, said he wanted to participate because he had never been involved in a Chinese New Year’s celebration before. He said such events encourage students to embrace new customs and ways of life.

“It’s great for promoting diversity, since we do have a Chinese population on campus,” Loose said. “ASU is trying to expand its horizons, and a great way to do that is by embracing the cultures of others.”

Pansy Yip, social chair for the Chinese Undergraduate Student’s Association and sociology sophomore, agreed that a Chinese New Year’s celebration at ASU was a great example of a cultural event promoting campus diversity.

“Honestly, there are very few events like this available to the student body,” she said. “Here, you get to understand new cultures.”

Celebrating the traditional holiday with Mandarin-learning students in Arizona is important to faculty, Pang said. They hope to convey the cultural context of the language to their students.

“This kind of event will hopefully make students want to learn more about Chinese culture, Chinese language,” she said. “[The event means] having them have fun together, eating good food together, maybe helping [them] study, even.”

The timing of this year’s ASU celebration was doubly symbolic, Pang said, because it was held on the eve of the Chinese New Year, according to American time zones, but in the middle of New Year’s Day in China itself. Sunday’s celebration marked the beginning of the Year of the Ox in the Chinese zodiac calendar, a sign known for its straightforwardness and even-tempered nature.

The Chinese New Year corresponds with the lunar calendar, usually falling in late January or early February, and was especially important in ancient times when farmers planted their fields according to the moon and weather seasons, Pang said.

On-campus groups like the Chinese Undergrad Students Association and Alpha Mu Gamma, a foreign language club, volunteered at the event by serving food, assisting in setup and cleanup, and publicizing the event.

The reason Pang and others organize a Chinese New Year’s celebration every year is self-explanatory — to celebrate, she said. And this year’s festivities being more organized did not change the pure joy of the evening.

“I just enjoy doing it,” Pang said. “I just like to get together with students. I’ve been doing this so long that I don’t even think why I do it.”

Reach the reporter at trabens@asu.edu.