Rice Families Weekend, 2025
2025-10-03 - 2025-10-04 | Rice University, Houston TX, 6100 Main St, Houston, TX, 77005, United States
Do you have a student at Rice right now? Families Weekend will be this October 3-4 on campus. Join in the fun, meet other parents and get to know Rice all over again!

Registration is here.

RUCAA Student Welcome Event
2025-10-08 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | Huff House, 6100 Main St, Houston, TX, 77005, United States
RUCAA, Rice University Community of Asian Alumni, is proud to host our 2025 Student Welcome event on October 8th, from 6-8pm. Come meet other Rice Asian students, RUCAA members and alumni leaders and enjoy some delicious treats! It’s a great opportunity to build connections, community and network.
We can’t wait to meet you!

If the RSVP button isn’t working, please email your name and, if possible, a non Rice email to rucaa000@gmail.com to register

TASS Talk: Andrew Schonebaum on Oct 16, 2025 at 4pm CT
2025-10-16 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Chicago) | Hybrid (In-person & Virtual)
Water, Connoisseurship, and Curiosity in Early Modern China

This talk will be held both in-person and online via Zoom on Oct 16, 2025 at 4pm CT. No registration is required to attend in person. To attend via Zoom, please register.
Abstract:
This talk explores the diverse ways in which water was understood, valued, and employed in early modern China, highlighting its cultural, medical, and symbolic significance. While large-scale water-control projects defined China as a “hydraulic society,” literary, medical, and popular texts from the 16th to the 19th centuries reveal equally profound personal and intellectual engagements with water. Water was not only crucial for everyday life at all levels of Chinese society, it also functioned as an object of connoisseurship, a pervasive healing agent that crossed religious and medical boundaries, and an antidote to the pollution caused by ghosts and demons. Beneficent dragons inhabited watery realms but so did evil spirits, often in the form of snakes, turtles and insects. This lecture reveals how different waters—from melted plum-blossom snow to dragon spit—were distinguished not by modern chemical understandings but by their embodiment of different environments. Water was liquid time and space. This lecture focuses on the intersection of natural philosophy, medical practice, popular culture, and literature in an effort to identify and explain the complex relationship between environment, body, cosmos and unseen realms in late imperial China.
Andrew Schonebaum is Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. He specializes in vernacular entertainments, encyclopedia, natural science and daily life in China, with particular expertise in traditional Chinese culture, literature, and the history of daily life in China.
Faculty Host: Richard Smith
The Transnational Asia Speaker Series is made possible through the generosity of the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Foundation.

Free

Rice Alumni Weekend, 2025
2025-11-06 - 2025-11-09 | Rice University, Houston TX, 6100 Main St, Houston, TX, 77005, United States
It’s time to come back to campus! Check out all the new buildings, see the students in action, cheer on our Owls and eat some BBQ! We will have a RUCAA happy hour/meet up, so stay tuned for details.
Registration is here.

RUCAA Meetup during Alumni Weekend, Sarofim Hall
2025-11-08 09:00 - 11:00 (America/Chicago) | Sarofim Hall, 2050 University Blvd, Houston, 77005, United States
Join fellow members of the Rice University Community of Alumni Association, RUCAA, for a casual and welcoming gathering during Alumni Weekend 2025 at Sarofim Hall on Saturday, Nov 8 at 9am. This event is a great opportunity to reconnect with classmates, meet alumni from different years, and strengthen ties within the Asian alumni community.
There is an exclusive tour at 9:00am of the newly opened Sarofim Hall, designed by Rice alumnus Charles Renfro and DS+R, available for the first 15 attendees who are interested.
Light refreshments, coffee and drinks will be served and RUCAA leaders will share updates on recent activities and future initiatives. Whether you’re returning to campus for the first time in years or you never miss an alumni weekend, this is a chance to celebrate shared experiences and build new connections in a relaxed setting. If you are having issues registering using the form below, please use the “Contacts” page and reach out there, including a message about RVSP-ing for this event.
REGISTRATION WILL CLOSE ON NOVEMBER 6, 2025

2026 Coast to Coast Lunar New Year Toast – Seoul, South Korea
2026-02-06 18:30 - 21:00 (Asia/Seoul) | New Blanc Central Myeongdong Hotel, 20 Changgyeonggung-ro, Jung District, Seoul, Korea, Republic of
RUCAA’s 2026 Lunar New Year Toast – Seoul
One night a year, RUCAA alumni all around the world are invited to gather together to celebrate community and the great spirit of our school. In groups both large and small, fueled by the fellowship of generations of Owls, parents, faculty, and friends, we toast to a new year!
Join fellow Rice alumni in Seoul as we welcome the Year of the Horse. Tasty food and drinks and the warmth of our Rice community will be available. If we have enough people, we will also have a special dumpling-making cooking class.
Event Details:

Date: Thursday, February 6, 2026
Time: 6:30 – 9:00 pm
Location: New Blanc Central Myeongdong Hotel
Parking: Mechanical parking available for up to 30 cars (SUVs not allowed)
Capacity: 20 spots
Cost: KRW 30,000 per person payable at the event

Come ready to learn, possibly cook, share stories, and reconnect with old friends while making new connections within the Rice family. This is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our traditions while looking forward to the year ahead. If the RSVP button isn’t working properly, please email us at rucaa000@gmail.com.

We can’t wait to celebrate with you!

RUCAA Virtual Lecture Series, Lecture 1 - Prof Sidney Lu on "Model Minority: Myth of Culture, Myth of Success"
2026-02-10 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | Virtual
Join us virtually for the inaugural lecture in RUCAA’s Virtual Lecture Series on Feb 10, 2026 at 7pm CT. Prof Sidney Lu will discourse on the subject of the “Model Minority: Myth of Culture, Myth of Success”.
Asian Americans have been described as the model minority by other groups in the U.S. This talk discusses how the context of the Cold War was crucial for the formation and popularization of this discourse. The talk also discusses how the myth of culture and the myth of success, the two pillars of the model minority discourse, have negatively affected the parent-children relationship amongst Asian Americans themselves. The discussion will be followed by a break-out session.
As Rice alumni we love learning, and hope that you find this subject matter useful, introspective and and enlightening. If you have any Rice professors who have inspired you, please don’t hesitate to share that with us in our messages as we look to expand this series.
You will receive a zoom link upon registration.
Registration is here.
–Professor Sidney X. Lu, Ph.D. is the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Transnational Asian Studies at Rice University. He is a social and cultural historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japan and East Asia, with research interests in the areas of migration, settler colonialism, gender, race, and trans-Pacific connections. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013. At Rice, he teaches widely on the topics of Asian American History, modern Japan, modern East Asia, as well as Minorities and Subcultures in Asian Societies. He is the author of:
Collaborative Settler Colonialism: Japanese Migration to Brazil in the Age of Empires (University of California Press, 2025)
The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism: Malthusianism and Trans-Pacific Migration (Cambridge University Press, 2019)
Co-editor of the Book Series: Between Asias and Americas

2026 Coast to Coast Lunar New Year Toast – Washington, DC
2026-02-15 11:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York) | Luna Hall DC, 625 H St NW Unit 103, Washington, DC, DC, 20001, United States
RUCAA’s 2026 Lunar New Year Toast – Washington DC
One night a year, RUCAA alumni all around the world are invited to gather together to celebrate community and the great spirit of our school. In groups both large and small, fueled by the fellowship of generations of Owls, parents, faculty, and friends, we toast to a new year!
Join fellow Rice alumni in Washington DC as we welcome the Year of the Horse with delicious food, meaningful conversation, and the warmth of our Rice community.
Event Details:

Date: Sunday, February 15, 2026
Time: 11:00 am – 2:00 pm
Location: Luna Hall DC, 625 H St NW Unit 103, Washington, DC 20001
Parking: Street parking, Metro accessible
Capacity: 15 spots

Payment: Food Hall – Self-order & self-pay, there is a bar for those who partake.
Family friendly venue
Come ready to share stories, reconnect with old friends, and make new connections within the Rice family. This is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our traditions while looking forward to the year ahead.
If the RSVP button isn’t working properly, please email us at rucaa000@gmail.com.

We can’t wait to celebrate with you!

2026 Coast to Coast Lunar New Year Toast - Houston, TX
2026-02-15 12:00 - 14:30 (America/Chicago) | Triple Pepper Richmond, 4720 Richmond Ave, Houston, TX, 77027, United States
RUCAA’s 2026 Coast to Coast Lunar New Year Toast – Houston
One night a year, RUCAA alumni all around the world are invited to gather together to celebrate community and the great spirit of our school. In groups both large and small, fueled by the fellowship of generations of Owls, parents, faculty, and friends, we toast to a new year!
Join fellow Rice alumni in Houston as we welcome the Year of the Horse with delicious food, meaningful conversation, and the warmth of our Rice community.
Event Details:

Date: Sunday, February 15, 2026
Time: Noon-2:30pm CT (TBD)
Location: Triple Pepper on 4720 Richmond Ave, Houston TX
Parking: Ample parking available
Capacity: 20 spots

Payment: Even split for food; separate checks for alcohol
If the RSVP button isn’t working properly, please email us at rucaa000@gmail.com.

2026 Coast to Coast Lunar New Year Toast – New York, NY
2026-02-15 18:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | Chi, 492 9th Ave, New York, NY, 10018, United States
RUCAA’s 2026 Lunar New Year Toast – New York
One night a year, RUCAA alumni all around the world are invited to gather together to celebrate community and the great spirit of our school. In groups both large and small, fueled by the fellowship of generations of Owls, parents, faculty, and friends, we toast to a new year!
Join fellow Rice alumni in New York as we welcome the Year of the Horse with delicious food, meaningful conversation, and the warmth of our Rice community.
Event Details:

Date: Saturday, February 15, 2026
Time: 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Location: Chi (492 9th Ave, New York, NY) on 9th Ave, between 37th and 38th St.
Subway: Nearest subway stops are Hudson Yards, Penn Station or Port Authority
Capacity: 36 spots

Payment: Even split for food; pay for your own alcohol
Come ready to share stories, reconnect with old friends, and make new connections within the Rice family. This is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our traditions while looking forward to the year ahead. If the RSVP button isn’t working properly, please email us at rucaa000@gmail.com.

We can’t wait to celebrate with you!

2026 Coast to Coast Lunar New Year Toast – Marina del Rey, CA
2026-02-15 18:30 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | NAMOO, 13455 Maxella Ave, Marina Del Rey, CA, 90292, United States
RUCAA’s 2026 Lunar New Year Toast – Marina del Rey
One night a year, RUCAA alumni all around the world are invited to gather together to celebrate community and the great spirit of our school. In groups both large and small, fueled by the fellowship of generations of Owls, parents, faculty, and friends, we toast to a new year!
Join fellow Rice alumni in Marina del Rey as we welcome the Year of the Horse with delicious food, meaningful conversation, and the warmth of our Rice community.
Event Details:

Date: Sunday, February 15, 2026
Time: 6:30 – 9:00 pm
Location: Namoo, Villa Marina Marketplace, 13455 Maxella Ave
Parking: Free parking lot available
Capacity: 15 spots

Payment: Even split for all food and alcohol/beverages consumed
Come ready to share stories, reconnect with old friends, and make new connections with our RUCAA family. This is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our traditions while looking forward to the year ahead. If the RSVP button isn’t working properly, please email us at rucaa000@gmail.com.
We can’t wait to celebrate with you!

Pickleball in SoCal, co-hosted with AAAYA, the Association of Asian American Yale Alumni
2026-03-07 14:45 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | California Yacht Club, 4469 Admiralty Way, Marina Del Rey, CA, 90292, United States
The Rice University Community of Asian Alumni (RUCAA) and the Association of Asian American Yale Alumni (AAAYA) invite you to an afternoon of pickleball fun!
Whether you’re a seasoned player or picking up a paddle for the first time, join us for a friendly afternoon of games, networking, and community building. This is a wonderful opportunity to connect with fellow Yale and Rice alumni while enjoying one of the fastest-growing sports around. There will be optional coaching by the club pro for those who want it/are new to pickleball. Free parking is available in the club’s Guest Lot.
Event Details:

Date: Saturday, March 7, 2026
Time: 2:45 – 5:00 pm
Location: California Yacht Club, 4469 Admiralty Way, Marina del Rey, CA 90292
Cost: $25 per person

Equipment is available, but you’re welcome to bring your own paddle if you prefer. All skill levels are welcome! Come ready to play, laugh, and connect with alumni from both communities.
We look forward to seeing you on the courts!
Click here to register.
