The Year of the Rooster started on January 28, 2017. This year, our preparation for the Chinese New Year celebration began in Olga’s puppetry class where students made paper cuttings of roosters. Afterward, puppetry students and Chinese students collaborated on a play performed in Room 5-4. The play is a story about a young rooster who is learning how to call. He calls so often that he wakes everyone up at random times. Eventually, he learns to call only once a day in the morning.
Seniors helped to decorate the cafeteria to make it festive for the holiday so that the entire school would be aware of the start of the Chinese New Year. Other celebratory activities included a fashion show, singing traditional songs, rope jumping, shuttlecock kicking and paper folding to make small chickens. As has been our tradition in years past, Mr. Zhang instructed students on Calligraphy and Howard Latting led a martial arts demonstration for the middle school students. Former Chinese faculty Michael Hurst sang a Chinese song that the students enjoyed very much.
In Chinese New Year tradition, we ordered Chinese egg rolls and scallion pancakes which were tasty and crispy, and ate oranges and apples along with other Chinese snacks and sweets. The right-hand part of the Chinese character for orange means bliss and good fortune. The pronunciation of the first character (ping) in the Chinese word for apple (ping guo) is the same as in the word for peace (ping an). Apples and oranges are the two fruits that Chinese people at least buy and display on a table during New Year celebrations. The celebration lasts for two weeks, and ends on the 15th of the first month of the lunar calendar, to celebrate the first full moon of the year.
– Yuming Guo, Faculty
