Happy Year of the Snake!
Category
Liberation and Community
Date
27 jan 2025
Author
Stephanie Yeung - DPFS
Read Time
2 min

農曆新年 or 农历新年, which translates into “Lunar New Year” (also known as “Spring Festival”) is something I have always celebrated every year without fail. The Lunar New Year celebrates the beginning of Chinese lunar calendar, which marks the beginning of spring!
Growing up, we would do all sorts of things and traditions to celebrate the festival! I’d get dressed in traditional Chinese clothing, or just wear something red when I was feeling lazy, and we’d go visiting our friends and family.
My highlight of the celebrations will always be receiving red packets from my elders (since they’re filled with money)!
When I came to the UK for university, it signified the first time in my life that I would be celebrating the festival away from home.
Ever since I've been in the UK, I’ve always found food to be one of the biggest things that helped me feel connected to my family and culture, and there’s nothing quite like a home-cooked dish to help me with celebrating the festival!
蘿蔔糕 or 萝卜糕 (radish cake) is one of my go-to favourite dishes when it comes to celebrating the new year. And I’ve made it a tradition for the past 3 years to make it for the new year! Sometimes I eat them all (because they’re so good haha), but more often than not, I find greater joy in sharing them with my friends.
A big part of the new year is about families and communities coming together and reuniting with each other. Whilst I don’t have any relatives here in the UK, I’ve come to find my family in my friends. I’d usually meet up with my friends for 團年飯 or 团年饭 (reunion dinner), where we all get to share the food we cooked with one another, catch up, and find some sense of home and familiarity amongst ourselves.
A common tradition for the new year is to play the Chinese tile game Mahjong! I found a lot of fun celebrating the festival with many other Imperial students through the game over the past years, and this year, you can too! We’ve collaborated with our very own Mahjong Society to run a free, beginner-friendly Mahjong 101 event on Wednesday 29 Jan, for anyone who’s interested in the game, or for those who just want to celebrate the new year! You can count on me to be there!
What about you? Are you celebrating the Year of the Snake, and if so, tell us your story and how you’re celebrating the new year!