Celebrating tradition and culture with Lunar New Year

MT. PLEASANT - Mt. Pleasant's Masonic Lodge was adorned in red on Saturday as community members gathered to ring in the Year of the Rat. The evening was filled with singing, dancing and good food as the Asian community celebrated the Lunar New Year.

The event, which was free-for-all to attend was a joint celebration of the Asian holiday. Various cultural groups were represented, including families with Vietnamese, Laotian and Chinese backgrounds.

Attendees traveled from as far as Des Moines for the gathering, including Ly Huynh.

Huynh, who grew up in Mt. Pleasant, said her family moved to the town from Maine in 1995 and was one of the first Vietnamese families in the area. To help celebrate the biggest Asian holiday of the year, her parents along with the other Vietnamese families in town began hosting Lunar New Year celebrations.

'It's a tradition that has been going on for over 20 years,” she said, 'We were the first generation here and my parents wanted to keep the culture going and tried to put something together. Every year, they would take turns hosting … It's fun to come back to see everyone. Now that I have kids, it's a three generation gathering.”

This year's celebration was organized by Thuy Nguyen and Phoung Tiet.

Nguyen, who has been involved with the event for the last seven years said celebrating the New Year is important because many of the people who immigrated from Southeast Asia don't always have an opportunity to travel home.

'We miss the culture so we need to do something to celebrate and get together with friends and family,” she said, 'We just have a good time together, whoever wants to come can come and eat and enjoy.”

For those of the younger generation, the Lunar New Year is not only an opportunity to collect red envelopes filled with money, but also a chance to remember and reflect on the sacrifices their parents are making by being in America.

Khang Truong, a senior at Mt. Pleasant High School, said the event brings a little bit of home to Iowa for his parents.

'It's about remembering home. It means a lot to our parents, being away from their home country,” Troung said, 'It's tradition, it's a time to get together.”

Truong's cousin, Anthony Nguyen added that celebrating the Lunar New Year allows him to recognize his cultural and ethnic roots.

'I think a lot of the times, growing in America, we can lose a sense of where we came from. Sometimes we forget all the things our parents went through, so getting the ability to celebrate new years with all these people who are the same age as our parents, it's important to see where we came from and where we are now,” Nguyen said.