Senior zoology major Mon-Fang Mei slapped her last two cards down on the table and pumped her fists in the air in celebration as she won her third game of Big Two at Saturday’s Chinese New Year event.

The Taiwanese Student Association organized the Lunar New Year Celebration in the CUB Senior Ballroom in honor of the holiday.

In previous years, the TSA celebrated the Chinese New Year together with a dinner, said Ming Kuo, TSA president and senior social sciences major. This year marks the first time they expanded the celebration into a larger event open to the entire school, he said.

“I think it’s time to introduce our Chinese culture to the campus,” Kuo said.

The event offered a number of traditional Chinese gambling games, such as Big Two, mahjong and shibala. There were also more common games, such as black jack, poker and roulette. Kuo said he and the other officers went to a casino to learn about putting on a gambling event. TSA officers handed out chips at the door for attendees. At the end of the night, players could trade in their chips for raffle tickets to win prizes such as Chinese toys.

James Jen-Kang Huang, freshman computer engineering major and TSA officer, was a dealer for the roulette table. “It started off pretty chill, then more and more people came, and it just got intense,” he said. “There were too many people around the table, and we had to make extra chips to keep up.” During the gambling, two movies played: the 2008 American film “Kung Fu Panda” and the 2007 Taiwanese film “Secret.” The club picked “Kung Fu Panda” because it shows Chinese culture in a way that’s easy for Americans to understand, Kuo said.

“Secret” was chosen because it is very popular in Taiwan and has won a number of awards in that country, said Yung-Hsien Lee, TSA officer and sophomore management information systems major.

In between the movies, a red and yellow lion weaved through the gambling tables dancing. The lion scares away evil spirits and brings good luck, said Po Yi Wong, sophomore communication major.

Huang said he was surprised by the number of people who attended the event – about 150.