Prepare to be enchanted: CSO’s Lunar New Year showcase

The Chinese Student Organization hosted its biannual culture showcase this Sunday, March 1, in Commonwealth Auditorium. CSO is an active student-run group on campus, hosting a plethora of events and bringing together students who want to celebrate or learn more about Chinese culture. 

With the recent occurrence of Chinese Lunar New Year, their showcase told the tale of the New Year beast, Nian. Their show used a witty retelling of an age-old classic, “Beauty and the Beast,” to educate the audience in an attention-grabbing manner. 

Fans of “Beauty and the Beast” recognized the beginning of the show. Audiences saw the prince hosting a ball when an enchantress came and cursed him to be a beast until his heart was pure. However, instead of becoming the furry beast we are all familiar with in the classic fairytale, he became Nian, the New Year beast, a large lion-like monster covered with armored scales and armed with sharp horns and claws. Ryan Malcolm ’28 played the beast: his first time performing. Malcolm was very excited to be asked to perform with CSO. He described the complexities of his character.  

“Obviously, he’s a guy who has a lot of character flaws, a lot of which has to do, and for this show, lines up with the values of Lunar New Year,” Malcolm said.

After asking him about the most challenging aspect of pulling the showcase together, he noted long rehearsals and the time spent learning his lines.

“I think it was getting everybody on the same page and making sure we’re expressing the emotions that those characters are meant to show,” Malcolm said.

All CSO members got invested in their characters and performances, making the show an exciting experience for everyone in the audience.

The show followed its characters into the village of Beijing, where we met Bei-la, played by Alex Anderson ’27, Gao-ston, played by Richard Shi ’29, La-Foo, played by Ariel Wang ’26 and several townspeople. They introduced the audience to the play’s setting and set up the storyline for the rest of the show. CSO interspersed many familiar plotlines into the showcase, with Gao-ston trying to win Bei-la’s heart and Nian capturing Bei-la’s dad. Once Bei-la traded places with her dad and stayed trapped in Nian’s castle, several of the cursed castle servants from the fairytale taught Bei-la about the castle and Nian’s curse. Bei-la committed to helping the beast fix his ways and stop terrorizing her village by teaching him the importance of a fresh start in the new year.

While the play was humorous and lighthearted, it also taught the audience about several important cultural traditions and what the Spring Festival represents. Many people may not be aware of the Lunar New Year or everything that the holiday entails, and the inviting atmosphere that CSO created was a great opportunity to learn more.

 “I think that CSO is extremely welcoming, whether you’re Chinese or not,” CSO culture chair and stage manager Teri Yu ’28 said. “But again, it’s one of the least cliquey, most welcoming organizations that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, and I really hope that everybody can learn a thing or two about Chinese culture.” 

The holiday is rooted in the Legend of Nian, a beast who lives in the mountains and emerges annually on the new year to terrorize villages, eat their villagers and destroy their crops. In the legend, an old man discovered the secrets to defeating Nian after he did not flee his village, and learned that the beast is terrified of the color red, loud noises and fire. This legend impacts the traditions of the New Year still to this day, with houses decorated with red lanterns, families wearing all red and exchanging red envelopes, celebrations using gongs and drums and firecrackers and lanterns being lit all around. 

The spring festival lasts 15 days, beginning on Chinese New Year’s Eve and ending with the Lantern Festival; this year, the festival started Feb. 17. This holiday is the most important annual holiday in China, and the members of CSO noted their happiness with being able to celebrate and come together for their showcase to tell this story to more people.

The show featured traditional performances, including dances and music. The first was the Lion Dance, a classical Chinese traditional dance, with live drumming along with the dance. This performance incorporated both tradition and fun, with the dancers taking the stage by storm and getting the audience energized and laughing, as well as including interactions with other cast members.

 The next was an umbrella dance, with dancers gracefully holding their bright umbrellas as they created dynamic poses using both their bodies and their umbrellas. There was also a performance using the pi-pa, a traditional four-stringed instrument plucked along to a song. Act two opened with a fashion show, where several CSO members got to strut the stage and show off an array of traditional Chinese clothing. 

There were two more dances in the second act. The first was the face-changing dance, where a dancer adorned with several vivid masks made astonishing hidden moves to change their masks and the emotions they were portraying. The second was a watersleeves dance, with the dancers wearing long white and pink sleeves that extended their movements and created a mesmerizing flow across the stage. These performances added another layer to the showcase that portrayed cultural arts that many audience members had never seen before. This made some of the symbolism of the show more accessible, as these performances took the story and made it real.

With two shows each year, CSO’s fall showcase focuses on the Harvest Moon Festival, and their spring showcase centers on Lunar New Year, as the showcase falls right after the festival has ended. The cast and crew worked hard for over a month, rehearsing and learning their lines to make this show come together. Yu and fellow stage manager and culture chair Michelle Wiant ’28 started working on their script over winter break, choosing which show they would parody and how they would incorporate cultural elements into their retelling. 

“‘How can we incorporate cultural elements into this?’ And then we just kind of go through the thick and thin of writing the whole script and then recruiting actors, recruiting performers and dancers and taking it from an idea to a stage play,” Wiant said. 

Once CSO reaches the process of dress rehearsals, they also incorporate costumes, sounds and lighting. 

“I think the biggest thing is that I’m working with AV to make this possible,” Yu said. “At first, I was really nervous, but I realized that we’ve done this before, and if anything could go wrong, it would have happened already. As the show came closer and closer, I realized that it’s really coming together.” 

The members of CSO dedicate a lot of time, effort and hard work into coming up with ideas for cultural elements, performances, costumes and perfecting their acts, and it is very clear when it all comes together on the stage. The love that the actors have for sharing their talents radiated into the auditorium and had everyone laughing and cheering along with them.

At the end of the show, the efforts of the main cast came to fruition when Nian shifted his perspective, had a positive attitude, avoided conflict and cleaned his temple. Malcom noted the significance of the character’s transformation.

“The whole point of it is to show that if you go through the traditions of the Lunar New Year, then you can grow as a person and maybe find something hidden within yourself,” Malcolm said.