On February 14, a multinational student company gathered in the event cafe of Polotsk University: representatives of China, Comoros, Congo, Sri Lanka, and Belarus. Chinese friends talked about the New Year’s celebration in China and helped everyone to touch the traditions of the country with a unique original culture.
Attributes of the Chinese New Year
Guests got acquainted with 12 symbols of the Chinese New Year. During holiday time all streets and houses are decorated with red paper lanterns. They light happy road to new year. In China red colour, as well as the upside-down hieroglyph ‘fu’ and the paired inscriptions ‘chunlian’, bring luck and happiness. The most popular gift is considered red envelop ‘hongbao’, where money is put, and give to relatives, friends, colleagues. This also means love and gratitude. Phrase ‘May you have fish every year’ means a wish to live without deficit.
Master class on writing hieroglyphs and making envelopes
An important attribute of the New Year in China is a tangerine tree, which symbolizes luck and prosperity, because in the Chinese language words ‘gold’ and ‘some tangerines’ sound similar. In the Chinese culture prosperity is also attracted by the Dragon dance. The most spread forms of the dance are dance with fabric dragon and dance with light-dragon. On the festive table of the Chinese, ‘jiaozi’ dumplings are indispensable, the name of which means the time of the arrival of the New Year, they are molded by the whole family in a friendly atmosphere, often a coin is put inside.
Master class on making dumplings
In the Eastern calendar, each year corresponds to a symbol of the year – a ‘totemic’ animal, element and color, the combination of which is repeated only once every 60 years! According to ancient Chinese tradition, when meeting the New Year, it is supposed to make loud noise, set fireworks, firecrackers, thereby driving away evil spirits. As festive decorations, ‘jianzhi’ paper patterns are popular in China, the carving of which is one of the types of traditional folk decorative and applied art of China, classified by UNESCO as a world cultural heritage.
The participants of the event
Guests of the festive event could try a lot of things which were presented. Students prepared and tasted jiaozi dumplings, with lucky coins inside, made festive envelopes hongbao, learned the most popular Chinese hieroglyph ‘fu’, decorated a panel with the symbol of year 2024 – Dragon, which symbolizes energy, power and generosity.
Liu Yonghao and Alina Shtukina (photo 1). The participants of the event (photo 2)
As an end of the holiday students lighted little fireworks, and thanked the organizers with loud applauses. The event was organized by the volunteer center of the university and an international student pair of presenters: Chinese Liu Yonghao and Belarusian Alina Shtukina.