Date: Friday, February 8, 2019
Time: 11:00 am – 4:30 pm
Location: UBC Nest, Lower Atrium
This year, to celebrate the Year of the Pig, UBC Department of Asian Studies hosted its Lunar New Year Celebration at the Nest. The event took place on February 8th, the 4th day on the Lunar calendar. Moving the venue from the Asian Centre Auditorium to the Nest (UBC’s Student Union Building), more attendees from diverse cultural backgrounds enjoyed this spectacular time of the year together.
The annual UBC Lunar New Year Celebration is not only a platform for cultural exchange between the East and the West, but also dedicates to make many international students such as Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese to feel at home.
Having the support from Chinese program, Cantonese program, Korean program, and UBC Chinese Music Club throughout the years, the Lunar New Year celebration has become the true experiences that make up the colours of our tapestry of diversity.
This year, we are proud to have five distinguished guests to open our celebration:
- Stefania Burt, Associate Dean and academic in Faculty of Arts
- Consul Jun Guo, Education and Culture Office in Vancouver’s Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China
- Consul Heesun Jeon, Culture Office in Vancouver’s Consulate General of the Republic of Korea
- Professor Ross King, Head of the Department of Asian Studies
- Wendy Yip, Mrs Ono, the University Ambassador of UBC
In the spirit of a culturally diverse celebration, Professor Ross King gave his speech in three different languages, while Mrs Ono engaged with our MCs and audiences in Cantonese.
The MCs for this year are students with different cultural backgrounds studying in Chinese Language Program courses. They opened the celebration by welcoming the audiences, including children from UBC’s Daycare. As a gesture of Chinese New Year celebratory significance, our little guests received traditional Chinese red packets.
The performances of this year’s Lunar New Year Celebration included:
- Lion Dance, by UBC KungFu Club
- “TiaoJiaGuan”, by Faculty Members and Teaching Assistants of the Chinese Language Program
- “XinJiang” Dance, by Cherry Tang
- Student Flash Mob, by Chinese Language Program and Cantonese Language Program
- Korean Drumming, by Korean Language Program
- K-Pop Dance, by Korean Language Program
- UBC Chinese Orchestra “Full of Joy”, by UBC Chinese Music Club (CMC)
- Fan Dance “Moonlight Thoughts”, by UBC Cloud T. Dance Club
Our audience and guests immersed themselves onto the floor in more personal interaction with the performers. Aside from the amazing performances, there are many more fun activities located at the cultural booths. The activities including Chinese calligraphy, Cantonese Mahjong, Korean traditional dress & board game, and ring-toss that attracted countless participants to join. Many special gift prizes were also given out to winners.
There were over 1,000 attendees, including faculty members, students and family members, who joined the celebration.
Huge thanks to all participating students for their splendid performances as it was an eye-opening and interesting experience for audiences. Also, behind every cultural event, apart from the help we obtained from our faculty members, Teaching Assistants and Work-Learns, we would like to thank our wonderful volunteers for assisting and putting the event together.
We would like to give our sincere thanks to everyone for stepping into the realm and celebrating this festive occasion with us. We hope to see everyone again next year!
May the year of the Pig bring joy and luck to everyone!
For more photos of the event, please visit our Facebook page below:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.336914456917748&type=1&l=b7a111602d