Celebrating Lunar New Year away from Home - Gair Rhydd

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Celebrating Lunar New Year away from home

With the Lunar New Year coming up, we can imagine that it is a time of incredible homesickness for some of our international students. Especially when it’s your first time celebrating away from home. Although it’s not the same, it might help a bit to gather some of your friends around and try to make it feel as close to home as you can get with these ideas of how to celebrate in South Wales. 

Visit local Asian restaurants!

Food, family, and friends are some of the biggest parts of the Lunar New Year. So, it might be worth bringing your university friends along with you to celebrate by visiting some of the more authentic Asian restaurants in Cardiff. Although all of us Asian students know very well that it is difficult to find an Asian restaurant that doesn’t serve chips, there are a few restaurants out there that are on the more authentic side, with some of our recommendations being Happy Gathering, Chinese Fast Street Food, and Happy Lok. Of course, there are many other restaurants out there that serve Asian cuisine on the more authentic side. Bringing your friends to some of thesea might help you celebrate an important part of your culture.

Lunar New Year Party @ Circuit Night Club

Everyone knows that when you’re a fresher you can’t really resist a night out. Even though it’s not a very traditional way of celebrating the Lunar New Year, heading to the Circuit Lunar New Year party might be a good way to combine this important holiday with stereotypical student ways of celebrating. So, consider dragging your housemates on a night out to celebrate the lunar new year in the most Fresher way possible!

An at home potluck party

Of course, we are university students, sometimes we can’t afford to go out and have a big dinner together, or splurge on a night out. In that case, it might be worth throwing an at home potluck party. Get some people together and have everyone bring a traditional Lunar New Year dish of their choice and have a night of celebrations. Not only is this a great way of getting your friends together to celebrate, but by having them bring a dish they made, you are also encouraging them to get involved in a meaningful holiday. That effort could make it all the more special. 

Make some traditional lunar new year food with your friends.

Maybe you don’t want to risk a potluck, the chances of multiple non-Asian friends showing up with egg fried rice is high, after all. Instead, it could be fun to get a few of your housemates into the kitchen with you and make some traditional lunar new year food together. If you’re a natural cook, you could teach them to make the food you love, and if you’re not, you could all have fun following a recipe together. By working together to make the food, you can embrace the sense of friendship and culture to make your Lunar New Year as special as it can be. 

Tell traditional Lunar New Year stories.

One way of celebrating the Lunar New Year at university is to tell traditional lunar new year stories. Whether it’s friends who are also from Asian backgrounds and have heard the stories before, or friends who have never really celebrated the Lunar New Year and don’t know them. It’s a good way to connect with your friends and celebrate your culture during the Lunar New Year.

We hope that these ideas help you celebrate the Lunar New Year even when you’re away from home and away from the people who you’d typically celebrate with. Although they’ll never match the feeling of being surrounded by your family at home, we hope that these ideas let you feel at home with your university friends during an important holiday.