With China’s season of goodwill upon us, today is also the day when the little ones take centre stage. Fitting therefore, for us to close the year with a look at what Nanjing’s international schools have been doing to bring in the year of the tiger.
Nanjing’s three principal international schools are located in distinctly separate parts of the city, a fact reflected through the students who attend the schools, their friends, families and employers thereof. And each of the schools also has their own way of marking Spring Festival.
At Nanjing International School (NIS) in Xianlin, Qixia District, Chinese New Year is always a flurry of fun and educational activities. As they do every year, in the run up to tonight’s new moon, NIS students of all ages have been kept busy immersed in learning about Chinese culture and history.
Calligraphy, lantern-making, zodiac animal crafts, games, stories, and other wonderful sights and sounds of the Lunar New Year filled the NIS classrooms and hallways. Many activities were student led, including planning for the events and performances held on the last day of school before the holiday.
Exciting, school-wide Lunar-New-Year-themed assemblies took place, together with a fun fair and a festive morning of traditional dress, “hong bao” (red envelopes), lucky draws and student dragon dances.
And just as one would expect, Mandarin classes were focused on the richness of the Chinese Lunar New Year and its traditions. Learners presenting their own understanding of the holiday and culture, combined with a plethora of creative art and performances, also delighted the NIS community.
Elsewhere, as an enormous network of schools spread across most of Asia, EtonHouse celebrates the Lunar New Year in different ways, according to each country’s cultures and traditions.
For EtonHouse Nanjing in Jianye District, that meant not only celebrating one another’s abilities, but also its community of diverse cultural identities and rich heritage. The Hexi-based school marked the beginning of spring and the start of a new year with an event entitled “Ancient Dynasties”.
Over in Jiangning District, The British School of Nanjing (BSN) put on a show to welcome the Year of the Tiger that was dubbed a “roaring success”. Opening with a dynamic team of drummers, the excitement never stopped as singers, dancers and some dramatic, and hilariously funny, duos took to the stage to perform.
Earlier, the School’s Primary School had launched its annual Chinese Culture Week. Therein, students in different year groups explored and experienced traditional Chinese culture through various handicraft activities.
The “Hulu” (葫芦), also known as gourd, is a lucky symbol for happiness and a bright career ahead, was also used as a water bottle in ancient China. BSN students learnt how the Hulu grows and is made into containers, and experienced decorating beautiful Hulus all on their own.
Students in other year groups also made their own oil-paper umbrellas, which they subsequently decorated, while finally, BSN’s eldest students in Primary School took to making make traditional kites. With the children moving into Senior School next year, the kites served as a metaphor for the student’s big dreams taking flight into their futures during the Year of the Tiger.