How Wenzhou students celebrate Thanksgiving

By Brittany Fuentes | Published November 18, 2023

Thanksgiving brings families and friends together to celebrate and rejoice in the holiday season, to reminisce and be thankful for the year they have had with food and laughter, but that is not the case for everyone. 

While college students are beginning to set up their plans with their families and friends for the upcoming Thanksgiving break, some students, like the Wenzhou students at Kean University, who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving have no family to spend time with. 

Junior Public Relations majors, Wu Jingyu and Zhu Kaixin have no plans for the break as of now because they can’t even go back home like students usually do. 

The flight to and from Chinacan be anywhere between 12 hours for a direct flight and 22 hours for a flight with layovers. Therefore, it is not a viable option for Wenzhou students Wu and Zhu to plan a trip back home for such a short period of time.

However, that doesn’t stop the students from making plans of their own with friends. Some students are planning to travel a little bit and take trips to Boston or Miami to visit different places while they are here and can do so.

Other students will stay more local and make shorter trips into NYC to explore the city and go places like the MET museum which they haven’t had the chance to go to yet.

Executive director for the Center for International Studies, Jessica Goldsmith Barzilay, says the center for international studies is in the process of planning something for the international students for the thanksgiving break.

While the Wenzhou students don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, they do have their own holidays that are similar to Thanksgiving and are as important to them as it is to most Americans.

The Spring Festival is the closest celebration in China to Thanksgiving where families come together to spend time together and celebrate.

“Every American celebrates thanksgiving because thanksgiving is a holiday for all families to get together so I think it kind of has the same meaning like the spring festival in China,” says Zhu.

It is so widely celebrated in China that people who work get a week off to celebrate while students have winter break in accordance with the Spring Festival. 

The time of celebration varies slightly every year because it follows the lunar calendar so the spring semester at the Wenzhou Kean campus also varies every year and usually doesn’t start until after February. 

“Thanksgiving is aiming to thank something, being thankful for each other but for the Spring Festival we are aiming to celebrate the upcoming new year, embracing the new year and stepping into our new lives,” says Wu.

It is not always possible for students to be with their families during the Spring Festival especially if they are studying on the Union campus.

For those who aren’t able to go home to celebrate, they get together with their friends to eat hotpot, a dish consisting of soup accompanied by a variety of ingredients that are added to the soup. 

They also have video chats with their families as a way for the students to have a feel of home without actually being there.

“Some kids might be studying abroad like us, some parents might be working in another province or another place but they come back to their families and get together with a big dinner, with many dishes,” said Zhu.

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