The Malden High Annual Lunar New Year Celebration occurred on Saturday, February 10th in the Jenkins Auditorium from 1:00pm to 5:00pm. This year’s festival celebrated the year of the dog and many people came to celebrate this occasion. Lunar New Year’s festival shows the diversity in Malden and encourages students to participate in unique acts.
Mayor Gary Christenson also attended the event along with Superintendent John Oteri and Malden High interim principal, Chris Mastrangelo. The event also had many sponsors including South Cove Community Health Center. The Health Center’s CEO Eugene Welch also made an appearance and gave a speech about the new health center opening up in Malden.
Volunteers from Asian Culture Club, Key Club, and YMCA Leaders came to help with the festival and mainly worked backstage in helping the performers or getting the technology in running the performances. Latin teacher Julie Snyder, who advises the Asian Culture Club, would like to give a shoutout to Rowan Marcus and the custodians for their help and making sure the event ran smoothly.
Performers from all over the Boston area came to show their talents at the festival. The Chinese Culture Connection was also one of the organizers for the event and had many featured performances from their Multi-Arts performance troupes. Performances included singing, dancing, kung fu and other traditional chinese performing arts. Their were also fashion shows after intermission and at the end of the event that featured the performers and students at Malden High wearing traditional clothing and other styles of formal wear.
Acts varied from Chinese instruments, chinese martial acts, different singing acts, and unique dancing groups. Malden High School Asian Cultural Club Cypher danced to the popular BTS, a kpop band famous song, Mic Drop. Dancers from the group cypher were very proud of their performance and hope to perform next year. Junior Vivian Dang stated that “Lunars [was] a very good experience” and she felt that she danced her best. Sophomore Jenny Nguyen stated that she “enjoyed dancing with her friends” and that her group “felt like family”. Junior Guanhua Ao stated that he felt his performance was “good and well executed” and he was “happy to be with his friends”.
Following the acts, came a fashion show. This allowed the students to show the diverse fashion of Asia. People showcased their cultural clothing on the stage with the Mayor.
Overall, Lunars New Year’s festival was a amazing experience that exhibited diverse cultural acts from all over Asia. Senior Lindsay Trannguyen stated that Malden High school “would be perfect to hold the festival at Malden High because it’s a place where everyone’s differences and culture can be acknowledged and shared with everyone else.” Everyone that attended the festival had a amazing time, and the performers. All people from Malden were welcome and came together to celebrate a New Year.
Click here to view the rest of the photos from the 2018 Lunar New Year celebration.
