From February 12 to February 14, the Center of Chinese Language and Culture held events dedicated to the Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year is one of the seven national holidays in China. It is called the Spring Festival, Chūnjié or Lunar New Year. This is the year of Green (Turquoise) Wooden Dragon which comes once every 60 years. According to the Chinese calendar, the Celestial Empire celebrates the year 4721. And these days, we not only wanted to congratulate Chinese students studying at the university and teachers of the Chinese language, but also to familiarize everyone with the New Year traditions and customs of the Chinese people.
The program of the festive week was developed by Chinese language teacher Wang Ganyuan and included a lecture-presentation “New Year in China: features and traditions”, as well as a series of workshops which aroused keen interest among all those present. For example, on February 13, all the participants took part in the workshops “The Art of Paper Cutout of Holiday Ornaments”, “Chinese New Year's Calligraphy”. On February 14 the participants of the events got acquainted with the features of festive New Year's clothes. It is believed that clothes for the Chinese New Year should be of bright colors, preferably red, pink, green or gold, since, according to existing omens, the brighter a Chinese person is dressed, the happier he will be in the New Year. Another workshop was aimed at mastering the origami technique. In this technique, during the class, the attendees learned to make a fan. Origami Chinese fan is not only a wonderful decoration for the interior, but also a wonderful gift that symbolizes beauty, harmony, longevity.
I would like to emphasize that the active participants of the program were not only the students of the Center and University, but also pupils from secondary school № 45 in Mogilev together with their parents and Chinese teacher Yulia Maslennikova, as well as gymnasium № 3 in Mogilev together with their Chinese language teacher Darya Myznikova.
Head of the Center of Chinese Language and Culture
L. G. Zaitseva