This week, our Mandarin Chinese 1 students celebrated Lunar New Year with a variety of creative and hands-on classroom activities.
In preparation for this significant holiday, teacher Hua Lin, shared with her students the deep-rooted significance of the color red in Chinese culture and its vital role in Lunar New Year celebrations. To understand the historical context, they studied the Legend of Nian, a Chinese folklore story about how villagers used the color red, loud noises and firecrackers to fend off a fierce monster who would decimate crops and livestock on New Year’s Eve.
On Tuesday, students dove into the art of calligraphy, forming Chinese characters with paint brushes and ink on delicate rice paper. With each stroke, their confidence blossomed, allowing them to elegantly copy duplets onto red strips of paper—traditionally hung above and beside doorframes to welcome good fortune.
These duplets, a cherished aspect of Chinese New Year festivities, express heartfelt well-wishes, often showcasing a beautiful parallelism in both structure and meaning. Students thoughtfully selected messages that resonated with them, with examples like:
- “Spring breeze brings success, flowers bloom for wealth.”
- “Every year brings peace, every year has abundance.”
On Thursday, students continued the festivities by making intricate paper cutouts of Chinese characters such as "spring" and "good luck," as well as cutouts of a snake to usher in the new year. A delicious sweet rice cake was distributed during class so students could experience a traditionally flavored dish shared by many people around the world during Lunar New Year festivities!
While springs still feels far away here in Albany, it was wonderful to see our students participate in such creative and memorable activities to expand their understanding of how many cultures around the world embrace a new year and a new season.
