An ICLP Chinese New Year Celebration

As you may know, I am currently studying mandarin at National Taiwan University's International Chinese Language Program (ICLP). This week ICLP kicked off the Chinese New Year (CNY) holiday with a bit of a celebration; feasting and fun. Although I didn't manage to make it to the previous day's CNY activity (exploring the beauty of Chinese Calligraphy through the writing of auspicious Spring Festival Couplets) on Thursday I managed to remember to snap a few pictures of the afternoon's activities.

Of course, in preparation for the time of year ICLP had already decorated its floors with seasonal items, such as this display in the student common room.





Hanging from the ceilings in the halls were a number of red and gold decorations.



Many doors had red signs placed above or on their surfaces, such as this one:



Kicking off the afternoon was a speech from the Director, 梁 欣 榮 所長 Prof. Leung Yanwing, who was presented with a token of appreciation.



While respectfully paying attention to the speech, students chowed down on this gorgeous lunch spread provided by ICLP:









Still low-carbing, my plate looked somewhat less diverse than other students', but rest assured it was still all delicious. (Note: following up my previous entry on low-carbing in Taipei, I finally found flaxseed in both seed and milled form at Jasons, right at the end of an aisle next to the milk.)



Then followed a lottery, with just about every student winning something from ipod shuffles to cash prizes.



Here is a winner of one of the more expensive prizes - note his restraint in not having torn off the wrapping immediately!



In order to collect the prize, each student was required to give a 表 演 (biao3 yan3, performance). These ranged to reciting "lucky" mandarin sentences, to singing a few lines of mandarin songs, to telling blond jokes in mandarin, to this brave fellow who demonstrated some polished martial arts moves.



Following the feast and lottery, some clever clogs had come up with a fun gameshow, putting a twist on Name That Person - name that person's mandarin name! The majority were ICLP teachers and students, but a few celebrities were thrown in as well to mix it up.



Students then split the next few hours wandering around various activities. Down in the common room, head teacher 范 美 媛 Fann Meeiyuan 老 師 helped students try their hand at 麻 將 Mahjong.



In a separate room, 李 盈 瑩 Li Yingying 老 師 demonstrated on various students the fine art of 算 命 Fortune telling.



Of course, thanks to the assistance of this booklet:



And the magic of YouTube:



Students also got in some KTV practice. Even some future students got in on the act with tuneful renditions of Liang Zhi Lao Hu (which is set to the same tune we know as Three Blind Mice).



My favourite activity was led by the lovely 黃傳娟Huang Chuanjuan老師 who is one of my teachers this semester: 剪窗花、貼窗花、紅包袋加工 customising red hong bao envelopes.



Having acquired a red envelope, the first step was to choose a stamp design, such as one of these:





The stamp was dampened with some sort of liquid, much in the same way you would press ink onto a stamp block. The tricky part came after carefully pressing the stamp down onto the surface of the envelope. Metal shavings were carefully tipped over the dampened pattern - careful not to spill!



A few extension cords later, hairdryers were wired up and ready to push hot air onto the metal shavings, slowly melting them:



Until the final result, which looked something like this:



Definately the most fun activity for someone like me who would be a closet scrapbooker (if only there were enough hours in the day). Xie xie ICLP!