No more monkey business, it’s officially the Year of the Monkey. The 7th annual Chinese New Year’s Festival was held Saturday in the University Union Ballroom at Sacramento State.

Once inside, the Ballroom was brimming with “Gung-Hay-Fat-Choy,” the Chinese phrase for “wishing you prosperity and wealth.” The local Chinese community turnout was so large that it overflowed out of the seats and spilled into the aisles, creating a tight space for anyone to watch the festivities on stage.

“It’s so crowded that it feels like you’re on the streets of Asia,” Clark Hsu, a freshman majoring in Electronic and Electrical Engineering, who has attended the celebration for the last two years, said.

At 12:30 p.m. the Chinese New Year Celebration Alliance’s last eight months of planning went off with a bang when the O-Mei Kung Fu Academy began the 12-hour day of festivities with a traditional Dragon Dance and Lion Dance.

Two dancers perform the Lion Dance – one at the head and one at the tail of the lion. The dances were also accompanied by loud music on drums, gongs and cymbals because it is believed that these loud noises can dispel evil and bring good luck for the New Year to come.

Next, at 2 p.m., artist Clarence Lee’s paper cut design of a monkey for the final stamp in the U.S. Postal Services lunar New Year’s stamp series was unveiled in celebration of “The Year of the Monkey.”

In honor of 2004’s new zodiac symbol, The O-Mei Kung Fu Academy performed a martial arts demonstration of Monkey Boxing and later Kung Fu with swords and staffs to increase the energy level in the room.

“Martial Arts are important to Chinese tradition because it is a show of strength that is believed to scare away the devil,” Jian- Hua Liang, Chair of the CNYCA and Vice President of the Elk Grove Chinese Association, said.

Pink, white, purple and light blue balloons lined the doors and stage to set a jovial tone in the auditorium. Throughout the day, performances varied from cultural dances, opera and traditional music to sign language, hip-hop demonstrations and karaoke, which relate to Asian heritage and culture. Behind the performers hung a gold leafed drawing of a monkey in between red and gold Chinese characters wishing good luck to all during the New Year.

The stage performance program featured volunteering members of the CYNCA–one of which, the Great Wall Chinese School, performed an excerpt from a popular Chinese ballet “The White Haired Girl.”

Ballet dancer Jessica Zou, 16, played the lead role of Shier, who tells the story of the daughter of a poor family in China before the Chinese Revolution. Her father cannot afford to buy her a present for the Chinese New Year, so he manages to bring her a single red ribbon instead of an expensive gift.

“The excerpt was to celebrate how you can be happy with simple things and to show that you can be happy without needing an expensive gift,” Zou said. “The point of the Chinese New Year is to be happy regardless of the situation.”

The festival was mainly a community event for Sacramento locals, not many Sac State students attended the celebration. However, Dr. Jude Antonyappan, Professor in Graduate Studies, performed Tai Chi with her teacher at the festival. Dr. Antonyappan has been associated with the CYNCA for the last six years and it is her second year performing in the festival.

This year, she volunteered to perform an ancient form of Tai Chi “Guang Ping Yang,” which is a secret style that is only taught in China. The style of Tai Chi integrates soft and slow circle-like movements with hard and fast punches throughout the performance.

“I hope that young individuals who see the performance would be motivated to learn martial arts themselves,” Dr. Antonyappan said.

This celebration was hosted by the CNYCA in order to involve not only the Chinese community in Sacramento, but the whole community in celebrating the New Year in harmony. Rather than going to San Francisco or Hong Kong to celebrate the Chinese New Year, the CNYCA formed seven years ago to bring the celebration to Sacramento.

The difference between Sacramento’s festival and San Francisco’s or Hong Kong’s is the level of interaction that the Sacramento audience can have with the ceremony itself.

“In San Francisco, the crowd is so huge that everything is outside which makes it all more open with a parade and fireworks,” Liang said. “We are indoors with a stage program that places more emphasis on the cultural and heritage displays.

“Here the weather is much nicer and more people have the opportunity … to participate in such activities as the Karaoke competition and the ballroom dancing rather than just being a part of the audience.”

The ballroom doors closed at 11 p.m. to the Chinese New Year Festival, ending another year of successfully wishing everyone a prosperous year to come.

For the audience if you didn’t manage to go home with a raffle prize of some sort you surely went home with a sense of culture and pride.