Chinese New Year

Many foreign people don't know Korea also celebrate Chinese New Year's day. It was 26/Jan/2009. In Korea, People eat Dduk-guk which is Korean traditional rice soup on New year's day and play traditional game like Yutnoli and we call New Year's Day 'Sul-nal'. Sul-nal is the most important national holiday for Korean people and we have three continuous holidays during Sul-nal.

I went to the Chinese New Year's event, held on campus instead of having Sul-nal in Korea.

Actually it was part of my homework for the Chinese class and I added my paper that I submitted to the professor in this blog.

Chinese New Year (新年快樂)
I went to the Chinese New Year’s event on Saturday, January 24, held by the Chinese American Student Association. The hall was decorated with long red cloths hung from the ceiling to the walls and there were colorful flowers floating in a jar on each table. It made me think that they prepared a lot to make this a successful event. The event was divided into two sections with dinner intermission.
The show started with a Chinese lion dance like one we could see on the first day of the Chinese new year in China. It was my first time seeing the lion dance and it didn’t look easy to dance since they could not see freely with that heavy lion mask. It seemed hard to move if there wasn’t a harmony between the person in the front and the person in the back. The Chinese lion dance kept people laughing with its droll behavior and lastly burst a balloon on the stage so people could see the Chinese new year’s greeting ‘ 新年快樂’.
The performances consisted of various performances that could show Chinese traditional culture. There were dance performances like ‘Orchid Melody’, which was charming and a delightful Chinese dance by young dancers, and ‘Chatting by a Lotus Pond’, which was more matured and a beautiful Chinese dance show. There was also a Chinese calligraphy performance, where two Chinese students drew flowers with the title ‘The essence of the plum blossom’ directly on the stage. In addition, we could see a ‘Chinese yo-yo’ which was much bigger than a western yo-yo. People had to use both hands to control it. We also listened to ‘Ancient Instruments of China’ such as guqin, erhu, and morin khur. The sound of Chinese instruments was not that heavy but people seemed touched by the delightful high sound. The show that I was most excited about was ‘Kung-Fu’ time. A Chinese student who had learned Kung-fu for more than ten years showed his Kung-fu and taught people some defensive tactics. He also said that Kung-fu is a martial art learned for defense and not for attack.
It was impressive that lots of people remained their seats after they had had Chinese dinner until the last show had finished. It proved the show was worth watching and that many people were interested in the Chinese culture. It was also great time for me because I could enjoy Chinese culture, something I wanted to know more about. I hope there will be more multicultural events on campus in the future so that people can learn more about different culture.