Chinese New Year Cultural Workshops

It’s a long-standing tradition at our school to celebrate Chinese New Year. On Monday the 24th of January 2022, we held a series of Chinese New Year Cultural Workshops. Each of the Workshops focused on a different aspect of Chinese culture. Chinese New Year is a festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year in the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. In Chinese culture, the festival is commonly referred to as the Spring Festival. The first day of Chinese New Year begins on the new moon that appears between 21st January and 20th February. Chinese New Year is a time for family reunions and celebrations. It is also a time for exchanging gifts, eating traditional food, and honouring ancestors. Chinese New Year falls on different days each year, but always in late January or early February.

This year, the Chinese New Year falls on February 1st, although celebrations will typically last 16 days, starting from Chinese New Year’s Eve (January 31st) and lasting until February 15th. The final day of the celebrations is marked by the Lantern Festival. Many people celebrate this festival by letting paper lanterns float off into the sky.

Every Chinese year is symbolized by an animal. 2022 is the Year of the Tiger. The tiger is an animal that symbolizes strength, power, and prosperity in the Chinese zodiac. The year of the tiger is typically associated with bravery, strength, and power. It is a time to embrace new challenges and take risks. Those born in the year of the tiger are said to be optimistic, ambitious, and courageous.

Cultural workshops are a popular way to celebrate the Chinese New Year. They teach people about the history and traditions surrounding Chinese New Year and give them a deeper insight into Chinese culture. They also teach how to make traditional food and decorations.

More importantly, Cultural workshops provide a genuinely fun way to get excited about Chinese New Year! This year, in a great example of our motto “one college, many campuses” in action, our students were joined by a large cohort of Year 9 students from Dulwich College Suzhou.

In addition to the Cultural Displays & Chinese Puzzles the full list of activities on offer was as follows:

• Entry Level Chinese Calligraphy

• Leaf Rubbing Art

• Fan Dance

• Wooden Bookmark Making

• Year of the Tiger wooden Lantern Making

• Chinese Knot with Fragrance Making

• Paper Cutting

• Suzhou Model Garden Making

• Traditional Chinese Painting

• Chinese Fan Painting

• Kung Fu

• Making Dumplings

• Making Wonton

• Ikebana

The school invited a wide range of professional practitioners (all with Green Health Codes) to hold traditional Chinese culture and art workshops across the school. These included Chinese painting, paper-cutting, dumplings and wanton production, lantern making and Kung Fu, all designed to let the students and teachers enjoy the traditional cultural fun.

The Chinese New Year Cultural Workshops were uniformly successful, with teachers and students enjoying the process of making traditional Chinese cultural art, appreciating traditional Chinese puzzles and food. We wish all staff, students, and friends of Dulwich International High School Suzhou a Happy New Year! We wish that everything goes well for you in the Year of the Tiger!