Kirkland House Hosts Hundreds for Lunar New Year Celebration

Nearly 400 students gathered in Kirkland House dining hall Saturday night for an early Lunar New Year celebration that brought five Asian student groups together around food and tradition.

The free event, co-hosted by Kirkland House and the Harvard Korean Association, Harvard Radcliffe Chinese Students Association, Harvard Vietnamese Association, Taiwanese Cultural Society, and the Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia Association, featured cultural activities such as calligraphy and paper lantern-making. Food, however, stole the spotlight.

Student organizers served traditional dishes including japchae, a Korean glass noodle dish, and rendang, a curry popular in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.

“The vibe is a lot of food,” Marianne Wang ’28, co-President of SIAMA, said. “We ordered half hot food and half dessert. So we had a lot of cakes – that was a huge hit.”

Iris K. Hur ’28, HKA co-culture chair, said the event also gave attendees the chance to try Korean dishes such as tteokbokki, a stir-fried rice cake, for the first time.

“They come back for a second round because they really like it,” said Hur, a former Crimson News editor.

This year’s celebration emphasized sustainability, said Chun-Yu Su ’27, a member of the Kirkland House Committee. Organizers received funding from a House sustainability grant, which required vegetarian options.

“I think almost 70 percent of all food is vegetarian, and we do use biocompostable utensils. We don’t have a lot of packaging,” Su said. “So as you can observe, we are trying to promote sustainability through this while celebrating the Lunar New Year.”

Su also invited Tzu Chi, an international Taiwanese humanitarian organization, to provide vegetarian Taiwanese dishes.

“We usually eat dumplings, which represent money. I made some rice noodles. It makes you healthy and have a long life,” said Emily Hsiao, an employee of Tzu Chi.

“I really support his goal and the core value to help our environmental friendly,” she added, referring to Su. “And as you can see, it’s all gone, almost. People love it.”

Attendees said the event created space for students of all backgrounds to celebrate Asian traditions together.

“Personally, I grew up in a place where there was not a lot of Asian people,” Christina J. Yum ’29 said. “It was predominantly white communities. And so it’s really nice to come to a place where all cultures are celebrated by everyone.”

Olivia K. Le ’29 said she appreciated the chance to “learn about other traditions that we haven't celebrated before” while also “bonding with people over things that do connect us,” such as eating che, a traditional Vietnamese dessert.

For Kirkland residents, the event reflected the House’s close-knit community.

“The best part about having a house like Kirkland or any other house is a general event like this,” Jessica Liu ’26 said.

“You really see how much effort is being put in here. They started decorating maybe a week and a half ago,” she added. “It’s really something that brings the house together.”

—Staff writer Mark C.Z. Snekvik can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at marksnek.62. Follow him on X at @markcsnekvik.