by Chris Jones ·
Friday, May 22, 2026
Pat Harris, Ling Jia, and Vivien Zia prepare sushi before the prom-goers arrive. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Celebration, the Harvard post-prom party, always incorporates an annual theme, and this year that theme was the Hawaiian luau. So last Friday, May 15, it was no surprise that the Hildreth Elementary School cafeteria offered a mock Tiki bar, a henna station, brightly colored table cloths and flowers, and homemade, authentic Chinese food. Wait … authentic Chinese food? Hawaii?
For the past four years, a small but generous group of Harvard residents, all originally from China, Thailand, or Taiwan, have made the majority of the food for Celebration. It was the brainchild of former resident Guangyu Fu, who started the tradition in 2022 and inspired roughly 25 adults to continue it. Dr. Chengwu Yang, who reached out to the Press about the story, explained the motivation behind the tradition: “We [the Chinese community] all settled in Harvard and love it and want to contribute to the community. … Yes, making the food involves time and money, but it’s really about love. We love our kids; we love our town.”
At 9 p.m., on Friday, the group mobilized at the elementary school cafeteria and put the finishing touches on a veritable feast. The feast included foods that many Americans would recognize, such as spring rolls (250 of them!), sushi, and bubble tea with tapioca pearls, but it also involved items like rolling donkey, zongzi, Chinese tea eggs, rice flour red bean, and mung bean pastry, which would prove to be completely new experiences for Bromfield juniors and seniors.
Rattamanee Pepin fries vegetarian spring rolls.
Zongzi, a sticky rice dumpling wrapped in bamboo leaves, came in both a sweet and savory variety and, according to UNESCO, makes the global Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Chef Ping Wang, who also substitutes at Hildreth Elementary and lives in Devens, explained that the dish takes a few days to prepare and is the staple food of the Dragon Boat Festival, a 2,000-year-old festival that celebrates the poet Qu Yuan on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. When asked why she goes to so much trouble to make the dish for Celebration, Wang said, “I want to contribute to the district. I want to introduce my culture to the children of the district.”
Yang felt the same way: “Chinese people are pretty shy and pretty traditional, and we want to stay true to our culture. But we also want to share our culture. … We can tell how happy they [the teenagers] are from their faces when they taste real Chinese food.”
This proved to be the case. After Bowen Clarke, a Bromfield junior, tried rolling donkey, a semi-sweet dessert made of glutinous rice flour, red bean paste, baked baking soda, and avocado oil, he said, “It’s amazing—my tastebuds have been dazzled!” Another junior, Evan Gill, after eating a spring roll dipped in a homemade sauce, said, “The sauce gives it a great tang. It reminds me of a samosa—nice crunch with little mess—clean to eat.” And before junior Laci Ostaszewski sampled anything, she remarked, “Wow, the wide variety here is really impressive.”
Lisa Boutelle, this year’s Chinese food coordinator, took this reporter on more than one visit to the kitchen that evening and explained that many of the chefs had volunteered all four years. She was grateful to Vicky Bilafer, this year’s Celebration Committee president, and all the volunteers who “did such wonderful work and put in a tremendous amount of effort.” Pat Harris, who was in charge of the sushi rolls, spoke about the post-prom event with a reverential tone: “The intent behind it [Celebration] is very meaningful, and we want to keep it going.”
When asked why this small Chinese group continues to cook for Celebration, perhaps Yang said it best: “We were looking for a better life, so we came here [to the United States], and we want to contribute. … We don’t care just about our kids—we care about all the kids in town.”