Central CollegeInternational Club |
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Activity Calendar |
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Each month, international students will have activities on campus,
including meetings which discuss the current issue happened on campus as
international students' perspective, or small parties which are about
cultural introductions.
Every student at Central is welcome to these meetings and parties. If you want to check out our activities in each month, please see the Upcoming News page. |
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Date: January 20, 2004
Time: 7pm @ CMCC house
Info: It is a small party to celebrate Chinese New Year. Chinese food will be supplied and the house will be decorated by Chinese custom decorations.
Title: Chinese New Year written by Minyao Jiang
It was the coldest time in winter. I rushed to the CMCC house and hoped that the party had not started yet. It was Chinese New Year, the day when most families stop working and enjoy their vacation. This was the second year that I celebrated the Chinese New Year in the US, far away from home.
When I got into the house, over one hundred people were there already. Shoes and clothes were placed everywhere near the front door. It just felt like the New Year in China because everybody was together and celebrating.
The Chinese calendar is calculated with a combination of solar and lunar movement. Usually before the New Year, families will prepare for the festival for about one month, including the food for the whole celebration period. In the northern part of China, the most popular dishes for families are called Jiaozi, which is dumpling. That is what we had at the CMCC house that night. All family members can participate in this cooking activity, even the children can help the parents with the simplest cooking. This is a good opportunity for families to communicate and have some entertainment after one year of hard working. In the southern part of China, people will usually have “Niangao” as their favorite dish. I still remember that every New Year, my mom cooks us “Niangao” for the New Year’s Eve dishes. It is a sweet steamed rice pudding that tastes just as sweet as it feels when people are with their families.
At CMCC house, we had all sorts of decorations. David Purnell, a professor who is helping to recruit international students made a speech before dinner started. In order to make the party more interesting, all the students who are taking Chinese class this year were singing Chinese New Year traditional songs. It was a combination of American and Chinese culture that night and every body enjoyed the food. Most importantly, more and more American students know something about Chinese culture because Central offers opportunities like this for students to experience different cultures.