Lunar New Year Celebration

Jingyi Han

17 February, 2025

On January 25, 2025, the Summit community came together to celebrate the Year of the Snake with a festive Lunar New Year gala event, co-hosted by the Library, the Chinese Club, and the Summit Area YMCA. This year marked the 12th anniversary of SLCC’s collaboration with the town library to organize this beloved event, with various activities concurrently at both the Library and the YMCA.

At the Library, residents participated in a variety of traditional Chinese cultural activities, including workshops on Chinese painting, calligraphy, paper cutting, and woodcut printing, and other traditional Chinese crafts for both children and adults, while enjoying captivating live performances of the Erhu (a traditional Chinese string instrument) and Peking opera. Over at the YMCA, the festivities were equally dazzling, featuring Bian Lian’s performance of Face Changing (an ancient Chinese performance known for its vividly colored masks depicting faces of well-known characters and actors changing from one face to another instantaneously), Chinese folk dance, Peking opera, Kungfu, and a lively lion dance where children fed the lion with red envelopes (red envelopes with gifts of money are traditionally given on Lunar New Year). Attendees also enjoyed food items from a variety of Asian cuisines.

The event drew over 700 participants, providing a venue for those members of the greater Summit community to immerse themselves in the rich traditions of the Lunar New Year. Local officials, including President Pro Temp and Councilwoman Delia Hamlet, and Councilwomen Michelle Kalmanson and Claire Toth, celebrated with the community. While delivering an address at the event, Councilwoman Hamlet said, “This event is a testament to the strength and diversity of our community. It’s wonderful to see so many people come together to celebrate such an important cultural tradition.”

In another exciting development, the Summit Free Public Library announced that they had finished cataloguing the children’s Chinese book collection on February 7, 2025. This initiative started in 2019 and was spearheaded by SLCC with donations and other generous support from the community. The collection now boasts 1,100 books, including original works in Chinese, translated works, and bilingual works, all cataloged and made searchable in both English and Chinese.

The project’s success is the result of years of SLCC volunteers’ dedicated efforts, including members of Bright Youth. Teen volunteers played a crucial role in cataloging the books, translating book titles from Chinese into Pinyin and English, and manually entering ISBN numbers and other information into the library’s catalog. Their hard work gave the community access to these books.

This achievement has gone through an arduous journey. Starting with a fundraising campaign at the 2019 Lunar New Year celebration, SLCC raised over $2,000 from the community to purchase high-quality Chinese children’s books. Volunteers, including teens from Bright Youth, spent countless hours sorting, translating, and cataloging the books, with the final batch completed in late 2024.

Sher Huang, a bilingual library staff member who played a key role in the project, retired on January 8, 2025, after seeing the initiative through to its completion. The SLCC team expressed their gratitude for her unwavering support and dedication.

Bright Youth was founded in February 2024 as the successor to SLCC’s Teen Club and has quickly become an integral part of the Summit community. The teen volunteers of Bright Youth were instrumental in both the Lunar New Year celebration and the library Chinese book project. They served as MCs, performers, and event volunteers during the Lunar New Year festivities, and their efforts in cataloging and promoting the Chinese children’s books have been invaluable.

In addition to their hands-on work, Bright Youth members have also explored creative ways to engage with the community, such as recording and uploading videos of the donated books online. Their enthusiasm and dedication have furthered the club’s mission to empower young people to make a positive impact through cultural exchange and community service.

The Summit Library Chinese Club and Bright Youth proudly serve as venues of cultural enrichment and community service in Summit. Their recent achievements demonstrate the power of collaboration, volunteerism, and a commitment to cultural diversity. As the community looks forward to future events and initiatives, one thing is clear: the spirit of unity through diversity and cultural exchange is alive and well in Summit.