Sara Phan and Tommy Le, co-presidents of UMKC’s Vietnamese Student Association (VSA), hosted a Vietnamese Tết celebration for the Lunar New Year of the Snake on Sunday, Feb. 16.
“We want to share the Vietnamese culture and tradition, and allow others to enjoy the holiday,” said Le. “VSA decided to bring us all together like one big family.”
VSA member Kayla Nguyen attended the event to enjoy celebrating her Chinese traditions in a welcoming space.
“As aVSA student, it’s really nice to have a place where I can have cultural values shared amongst my other peers,” said Nguyen.
The 2025 Lunar New Year welcomes another year of the snake, one of the 12 annual lunar zodiacs celebrated in many Asian cultures. Phan said that this year will bring extra good luck to those born in the year of the snake.
The event space was filled with gambling games that encouraged students to test their luck for the new year. Even for those with bad luck, there were many games without entry fees. The most popular game of the night was a traditional Vietnamese dice rolling game known as bầu cua.
“It’s like gambling, so usually at home families will gamble for money, but here we gamble with tickets. Basically, that game is just testing your luck and your fortune,” said Le.
Phan explained that bầu cua is a dice rolling game of luck. The dice are sided with animal characters and to play, place a bet on a character then roll the dice. If the dice land on the chosen character, you win. If the dice don’t land on the character of choice, take your loss and try your luck another time.
“The more you win, the more lucky you will be this year,” said Phan. “You want to win and you want to play more to test your luck.”
Every table at the event was filled with students and their family members as they enjoyed a free meal, games and traditional performances. These performances included a fan dance, a straw hat dance and a lion dance that the Phổ Hiền Temple in Kansas City performed.
“I’m looking forward to the lion dance, just because it tells a story and a dance, and it’s really fun to see all the different acts they do with it,” said health science major Kayla Nguyen.
Lion dance performer and VSA member Thuan Nguyen said his favorite part of the dance is having everyone’s attention and telling the audience a story through his dance.
Decked in fringe and sequins, the group of lion dancers performed for a crowd that left barely any standing room and every seat filled at the event.
“It (the lion dance) is a wide tradition, not just for Vietnamese but for other Asian cultures,” said freshman biology major Thuan. “It’s for good luck, prosperity, and to scare away evil spirits.”
Phan was proud to include four local Asian vendors to the event as well. It is the first year VSA has been able to extend its reach so far outside of the UMKC student body. Vendors included GoCha, Kimchi and Bap, Oboi Jerky Crisps and Dragon Wagon.
Le gave a tip that students should look forward to the VSA’s upcoming pickleball tournament and a collaborative event with KU. Keep up to date with future VSA events through their RooGroups calendar.
