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Lunar New Year is an important annual celebration for Chinese and other East and Southeast Asian communities. Also referred to as Spring Festival in China, today, Feb. 1, an estimated 1.5 billion people around the globe and here at Syracuse University celebrated the start of the new Lunar Cycle and the Year of the Tiger.

Historically, in Chinese culture, the 12 Chinese Zodiac animals are used to represent each year. 2021 was represented by the ox, while this new year is represented by the tiger.

Here at SU, the Esports Club celebrated by hosting a Chinese New Year/Spring Gala Festival in the esports room. The gaming center is located in the basement of the Barnes Center at The Arch and provides all the equipment for an immersive gaming experience. It is accessible to all SU and SUNY-ESF students.

The gaming room was decorated with traditional Chinese red lanterns hanging from the ceiling and Spring Festival couplets posted on the door, which read: “wish you peace and safety wherever you go.”

“Since we have a lot of different students from different backgrounds and countries, it would be a good idea to start these sort of events,” said Joe Lawlor, an SU senior and Esports Club supervisor. “It’s a really cool way to show different perspectives coming together.”

Some SU students, including graduate student Jiachen Li, shared the significance of this celebration.

“The tiger, generally speaking, as a symbol for this year, I think means a lot,” Li said. “First it means to be fierce; it means we need to be aggressive in this new year.”

Traditionally, Li would celebrate the Chinese New Year by lighting fireworks and spending time with family. This year, he welcomed the new year by celebrating with his friends and gaming.

In honor of the Lunar New Year, the gaming center, which has video game consoles like the Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4 Pro and Nintendo Switch, debuted its $2,000 virtual reality console, the HTC Vive, to event attendees and decorated the room in honor of the new year. Lawlor and Lauren Wiener, an SU graduate student and graduate program coordinator for esports, shared what the center prepared today in honor of the event.

“Today is going to be the first test of virtual reality for beginners, so anyone that’s never used VR,” Wiener said. “We thought that today would be a really good day to premiere this because it’s a whole new experiential adventure in the room.”

The new virtual reality console, the HTC Vive, is full-room scaled, allowing the player to duck, jump and move in different directions in as large a space as possible.

At the event, students could either play serious games with friends in competitive MMOs (massively multiplayer online games), or relax with casual games like Mario Kart.

Wiener said that the goal of the Chinese New Year/Spring Gala Festival was making the holiday a community celebration, where everyone could explore their individual interests through gaming.

“We’re really excited to just have people come in and enjoy the day together,” Wiener said. “We find that people in general really like to congregate in the gaming space because it’s somewhere anyone can figure out anything to enjoy.”

Published on February 2, 2022 at 12:53 am

Contact Paola: pggonzal@syr.edu