Produced jointly with Chinese student organizations at Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale, the festival celebrated China's rich cultural and artistic tradition with programs that included everything from traditional dance and choral ensembles to acoustic guitar and comedy — even a magic act. The sold-out event, which drew on the talents of more than 200 performers and staff members, was attended by undergraduate and graduate students (as well as postdoctoral scholars) from all of the sponsoring schools.

The festival, which included a keynote address by Mark C. Elliott, the Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History, celebrated the start of the 4,709th year in the Chinese lunar calendar — the Year of the Rabbit. The new year officially begins on February 3, 2011.

According to the festival's program, which can be downloaded from the HCSSA Facebook page, the student organizers at the eight universities planned Saturday's celebration for more than 10 months, over the course of which they exchanged more than 5,000 e-mails.

Photographs courtesy Harvard CSSA.