The Fujianese Union (FJU) is one of the newest cultural organizations to pop up at Binghamton University. In the short time its existed, the club has already carved out its own unique community among the University’s many Asian cultural clubs, kick-starting the semester with a strong turnout for their general interest meeting (GIM).

It’s hard to believe that only a year ago, the idea of a Fujianese student club was nothing more than a joke between friends. Tiffany Wang, president of the FJU and a junior majoring in chemistry, said the idea for the club first came to her during the spring of her sophomore year.

“I had classes with a couple of my friends, and I found out that we were all [Fujianese],’’ Wang said.

Wang said she and her friends had this realization while all in a car together, prompting one of them to joke that they should start a Fujianese club.

“But I considered it,” Wang said. “I thought it was a good idea.”

From there, the club slowly began to come together.

“Basically we just told everyone that we knew was [Fujianese] to tell their friends who were [Fujianese] to see if they were interested in a club like this,” Wang said.

Through the power of word of mouth, a group of potential members was gathered, and in a Zoom call in the middle of the night, they held the club’s first unofficial meeting. The meeting after that, the members began discussing E-Board positions.

Although now close, many of the E-Board members were initially strangers to each other. Bing Zhou, FJU’s social chair and a junior majoring in economics, expanded on this notion.

“It just makes it where it’s like there are other Fujianese people here, but I just haven’t met them,” Zhou said. “But it’s really nice that we could all come together and meet more Fujianese people.”

Once the E-Board was formed, the next task at hand was to expand the fledgling organization’s outreach. After starting with Instagram, they moved on to newer platforms like Discord. Still, spreading knowledge of the FJU to the student body has been one of the club’s biggest challenges since not many people are aware of the club, according to Wang.

The FJU is now provisionally chartered, which its members hope will amplify its outreach. Additionally, the club is hoping to expand to WeeChat to attract international Fujianese students.

For students who are already involved, the FJU aims to create a welcoming community, a goal that is clearly evoked in their official slogan — “FJU, we are here for you!” Crystal Lin, FJU publicity chair and a junior double-majoring in economics and geography, discussed how one of the club’s main goals is to build a strong relationship with the general body.

“We’re pretty new but that also makes people more open to us because they don’t really know anything about us,” Lin said. “I think over the course of a year we want to actually get to know the general body instead of having them just be a population that just shows up.”

According to Vivian Li, FJU’s co-event coordinator and a junior majoring in business administration, the FJU’s efforts to interact with their members have already resulted in a strong bond forming.

“Out of the events we’ve been having last semester and even the semester before, I feel like we do have people that regularly show up to all our events,” Li said. “So I do feel like we’re pretty close with our [general] body in terms of how we know certain people who come in, and we’ll know them by name and we’ll be like, ‘How’ve you been?’”

Through unifying BU’s scattered Fujianese demographic, the FJU has created a space where people from the same culture with a diverse set of experiences can come together to connect. An especially enriching aspect for both the club’s founders and its general body has been their educational events. Not only are the presentations informative, but they also foster an open-minded conversation between attendees, according to the FJU, as everyone shares their own personal knowledge and practices.

In only a short time, the FJU has built an environment that not only welcomes Fujianese students to find peers from the same background but also invites anyone interested in Fujianese culture in general. It’s a club that exemplifies how unifying culture can be, and its power to foster a deep connection. The kind that turns strangers into friends, friends into a family and a family into a community.