NCKU hosts Chinese New Year gala for international students

TAINAN, Taiwan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Year of the Snake is slithering around the corner for the start of the Chinese New Year. The Chinese Language Center (CLC) at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Tainan, Taiwan, has organized a spring gala, Feb. 6, to celebrate the biggest Chinese Holiday of the year.

“The center has fostered cultural understanding through education and fun”

More than 250 international students from nearly 30 countries including Japan, Korea, United States, France, Germany, Swaziland, Paraguay, Honduras and Australia have participated in dumpling making and spring couplet writing.

Some of the foreign students even wear Chinese traditional costumes, trying to write Chinese characters with a brush.

“The center has fostered cultural understanding through education and fun,” according to NCKU CLC Director Rong-Fu Wu who added that a spring couplet is a pair of lines of poetry expressing happy and hopeful thoughts for the coming year.

He said, “We have arranged Chinese dumpling making, Chinese calligraphy writing for international students to understand and appreciate the celebration of Chinese New Year and at the same time offered opportunities for them to practice the language.”

Meghan Wallace from America dressed up as a Chinese princess writing the Chinese character, “春” (spring), saying that to paste the “春” upside down on the wall means the spring is here.

Wallace is very fond of Chinese culture and has stayed in Taiwan for 5 months. She enjoys the life in Tainan very much and the local food.

Sewele Dlamini from Swaziland said, “This is my first time to stay at Taiwan for the Chinese New Year and in the gala I try the dumplings which are absolutely tasty and I will try Chinese calligraphy later to write my name.”

Dlamini pays particular attention to the differences in how people doing things between Swaziland and Taiwan, “Taiwanese people are serious about what they’re going to accomplish which motivates me to stick with the resolution whatever I do in the future.”

Graham Pierce from New York, who is particularly interested in Taiwanese history, said that Taiwan is a multicultural island where the people, food and life style represents various influences from many countries.

He said, “The spring gala is fun and many students from the world gathered here to experience the cultural events of Chinese New Year.”