BCI Chinese New Year Event 2022: Workshops on Campus

The Business Confucius Institute at the University of Leeds (BCI) celebrated the arrival of the Year of the Tiger with a cultural event on 1 February organised by our Chinese instructors.

Two Chinese craft workshops were delivered as part of the event: papercutting (剪纸) and traditional Chinese painting (国画).

The BCI saw many familiar faces in the crowd, including our alumni students. BCI Communication Officer, Xunnan Li, said:

An understanding of culture and arts is good for language learning. We were delighted have you all together to celebrate the Chinese New Year and look forward to seeing the progress you would have made in the upcoming term.

The event opened with an introductory session of Chinese New Year customs from BCI Head Teacher Xiaochen Man, who talked through home-return transportation (春运), grocery shopping (买年货) and New Year’s Eve (除夕).

Following the introduction, students were divided into two groups to participate in the papercutting and traditional painting workshops, and then the two groups switched classrooms to participate in the other activity.

Chinese instructor Yanan Chu taught students how to paint panda (熊猫) and bamboo with ink (墨) and Chinese painting brush (毛笔). Chinese instructor Yujie Cao taught students how to cut panda and Chinese character of Spring (春).

Whether what was created during the event was given as a gift or took pride of place on the mantelpiece, the guests had a great time and were brought a little bit closer to Chinese culture.