Mukti Khanna on Evergreen’s Lunar New Year Celebration
The Lunar New Year celebrations at Evergreen offer students a powerful invitation to understand both cultural differences and cultural universality from the inside out. Since 2004, a dedicated organizational team with diverse talents in event production has helped sustain this annual tradition. These celebrations provide immersive, experiential learning opportunities that allow students to engage directly with cultural practices, heritage, and living artistic traditions. Through this work, we bring distinguished guest artists to Evergreen, deepening our community’s understanding of Lunar New Year as a globally observed event.
The event’s collaborative foundation showcases the strengths of our own faculty—such as Lin Crowley and Hirsh Diamant—alongside internationally respected teachers including:
Experiencing cultural practices and ways of being firsthand is central to transformational education. It cultivates global coherence, empathy, and understanding— qualities illustrated in the trailer for the upcoming documentary “Moving Joy,” which explores Chungliang Al Huang’s life and teachings.
Although many Evergreen students have participated in Lunar New Year events on campus or via Zoom over the years, some have taken their learning even further by studying in China. These students often describe the embodied philosophical foundations they encountered—through movement, ritual, and cultural arts—as essential to the innovative contributions they are now making in their communities and professions. I am deeply grateful for the support of the Evergreen Deans, academic programs, and community partners who have helped sustain the Lunar New Year series from 2004–2026. Their support has allowed experiential, intercultural learning to remain an integral part of Evergreen’s educational vision.
