“Gong xi, gong xi, gong xi” echoed throughout the courtyard as vibrant red and gold decorations engulfed activity booths Jan. 29 for the annual Lunar New Year celebration.
Led by World Language teachers, Advanced Study Chinese and Chinese intensive students, students across middle and upper school participated in several sustainable Taiwanese night market games, enjoyed Chinese song performances, ate Asian foods and watched a dragon dance to ring in the new year. The night market games included ring toss, darts and trivia, tic-tac-toe and guess the food to give students a glimpse into Taiwanese cultural celebrations and the Lunar New Year. This year’s celebration honored the year of the snake, which represents wisdom, love, happiness and good luck in Chinese mythology.
In an effort to be more sustainably conscious, World Language Teacher Pei-Ying Gosselin described how Chinese classes made the activities out of pre-existing materials students brought from home, such as empty glass bottles and used boxes. Gosselin said she wanted to bring elements of Taiwanese night markets to the courtyard for the Lunar New Year because the Archer Abroad trip to Taiwan is taking place this spring.
“Nowadays, we use a lot of single-use items, and it creates a lot of trash,” Gosselin said. “We just want to let the Archer community learn that we can use things we find at home, create very fun games and still enjoy the festival.”
Chinese student Dakota Tooley (’26) said the sustainability aspect of the celebration not only created less waste, but also encouraged mindfulness of the cleanup process by the facilities team.
“We want to be mindful of facilities and of everybody who’s coming. We also don’t want to make a big mess of things,” Tooley said. “So, we have a cleanup crew after to make sure we aren’t leaving any trace.”
Due to coordination and time constraints given the recent wildfires, students were not able to bring in home-cooked Chinese foods, put on the annual fashion show or lead a calligraphy booth as they have in past years. However, Chinese student Hannah Harrison (’26) said this did not stop the festival from including a wide variety of prepared performances and fun games. Sixth grader Miriam Goetsch was one of the many students who attended the celebration to learn more about Chinese culture and honor the new year sustainably.
“The climate clock is ticking, and we’ve only got so much time,” Goetsch said. “[The celebration] shows others that there are items already in use that can be used again. It shows you can replace games with reusable items and still have fun.”
Harrison explained that sustainability and cultural celebrations are not mutually exclusive, and adapting future celebrations to be more mindful of waste consumption is crucial.
“We have a lot of materials from previous years, such as ink stones and brushes, and we can use otherwise unusable items to recreate these games, so we have a lot to work with,” Harrison said. “Our mindset was to approach the festival by thinking, ‘What do we have and what can we do with what we have?’ We [wanted] to make the most of the celebration given all of the circumstances.”