Chinese New Year Garden Party Held by Texas Southern University Confucius Institute and Rice University

February 17th , 2018

In the afternoon of 17th Feb, Texas Southern University Confucius Institute and Rice University organized 2018 Chinese New Year Garden Party to celebrate the most important Chinese traditional festival - Chinese New Year.Professor Yi Xiao, the director of TSUCI, Fa Lina and Hu Xiaobin Chinese teachers, and Chinese volunteer teachers brought various cultural activities, such as Tai Chi, riddles, Peking Opera facial painting, pandas claying and puppies, paper cutting, paper folding, face painting and photo taking.Participants can experience all kinds of Chinese cultural activities, including food tasting, Chinese cultural game pass, lottery and so on after buying tickets. They can get a certification for every activities after going through successfully. With a specific amount certifications, participants are able to have a chance to get a lottery with interesting gifts.

At first, what attracted most people was Chinese food tasting. In every Chinese traditional festival, there are always a lot of delicacies made by parents on the table. This garden party started with Chinese delicacy, making students and teachers immersed in Chinese delicious food. In Peking Opera facial painting, Chinese volunteer teachers introduced

Peking Opera culture patiently. Every color on facial make-up represents a personality. Participant can pick up their favorite color to paint. At the same time, a lot of people gathered together at the riddle booth. There were Chinese riddles and English riddles. Some participants were confused about the riddle, some were proud of having the right answer, some were surprised at the answers, some laughed after knowing the answers. One local people guessed most English riddles and said “it’s a very interesting activity. Participants knowing some Chinese wanted to try Chinese riddles. Riddles were quite popular among participants.Paper cutting gave an opportunity to foreigners to learn about the Chinese paper cutting culture and try to cut a character, Chun, which has the meaning of spring. After folding, drawing, cutting, most people were surprised at the beautiful shape they got, like magicians.

This garden party had diverse forms to let students get close to Chinese culture. Students were very happy to have this activity no matter what prize they got.Professor Yi Xiao, the director of TSUCI, said this kind of Chinese New Year activities can trigger students’ interests in learning Chinese. TSUCI is going to seek more cooperation with local school to show the charm of Chinese culture.