There is no celebration without singing and dancing.
Yangge dance (秧歌 yāngge) has a long history dating back to Han Dynasty and has become an essential part of festival celebrations in China. Every year, in the first month of the Chinese lunar calendar, Yangge will be performed to mark a prosperous new year.
In this short video presentation, we invited the Yangge Dance Team of Chinese Welfare Association Northern Ireland to send their CNY greetings with some folk dance clips for appreciation. Hope you will enjoy it.
For better effect, you may watch it fromYoutube. For audience from mainland China, you can access the video via this link
We are also grateful to Sharon Fan, one of our Chinese tutors, to perform her singing for your appreciation.
For better effect, you may watch it fromYoutube. For audience from mainland China, you may access via this link.
With thanks to Queen’s students DENG Wei (邓维), and QIAO Zexuan (乔泽轩) for coming together to produce this Celtic/Chinese inspired performance to welcome the arrival of the Spring Festival.
For audience from mainland China, you can access the video via this link.
We would also like to share our President and Vice-Chancellor’s New Year greeting with you all. In his message, Prof Ian Greer points out that Tiger loves adventure and challenge – the two characteristics will take you afar here at Queen’s. It’s not that you have to be always the strongest – life is that using all skills you have and those you’ve learned to take you further.
For audience from mainland China, you can access the video via this link.
We hope you enjoy a happy and healthy year ahead and look forward to welcoming you to our CNY celebrations launch event on Wednesday 02/02 and the culture talks that follow.
The Language Centre at Queen’s and the BAME&I Staff Network invite staff, students, as well as members of the public, to join in welcoming the Year of The Tiger, which falls on Tuesday 1 February, with a variety of online cultural celebrations that explore the theme of Connectedness and Inclusion.
The launch event is scheduled between 13:00 and 14:15 on Wed 2 February featuring welcomes, cultural performances and a guest talk, followed by a variety of culture talks in the following weeks, as part of the Chinese Culture Forum 2022. All welcome!
The online Art Exhibition, in collaboration with the ArtEast Club, is open for viewing now. You are very welcome to leave your thoughts and votes for the ones you like best from each other the artists.
What can you do on a rainy and wet winter day? Perhaps visiting a museum for an exhibition or event will be a good choice. In this post, we invite Yang LIANG (梁阳), a Queen’s graduate in TESOL from School of Social Science, Education and Social Work to share with you her recent experience of visiting Henan Museum (河南博物院Hénán Bówùyuàn).
About Henan Museum
Henan Museum, built in 1927, is one of the oldest and largest museums in China. Its site changed for several times and finally lies at Nongye Road, Jinshui District, Zhengzhou, Henan. It is a history and art museum with a collection of more than 130,000 pieces of cultural relics through the ages.
The Homepage of Henan Museum (English version). The light spot on the map of China shows you where Henan Province locates while the shape on the left displays the provincial geographical range.
After some ten years, I went to visit Henan Museum again. This time, I went there mainly for a show on ancient Chinese music performance, as well as re-visiting the relics.
– Yang Liang
The ticket is free, but one needs to book it, either online or on site. I did it via a mobile app for a slot of admission. Then I took a bus there, as the public transport system is very convenient nowadays and there is a bus station nearby.
E-ticket via a mobile app
The Nongye Road (农业路) | Image@YangLiang
The Bo Wu Yuan Station (The Museum Station) | Image@YangLiang
The outdoor self-service storage zone | Image@YangLiang
The collection of photos show what the main entrance looks like and the main exhibition halls from different angles.
Henan Museum, front | Image@YangLiang
Henan Museum, side | Image@YangLiang
Henan Museum, side | Image@YangLiang
This is what it looks like inside of the museum with some of the exhibits. For a full range of exhibition, you can return to the Museum’s website above.
Henan Museum, inside, the hallway | Image@YangLiang
An introduction to female clothing in Tang Dynasty | Image@YangLiang
An introduction to the palace lamp in Han Dynasty| Image@YangLiang
The exhibit of Changxin Palace Lamp | Image@YangLiang
The collage of the exhibit from different angles | Image@YangLiang
Fu Hao wine vessel exhibit | Image@YangLiang
As a layperson of architecture and archaeology, I’m not going to focus on these constructions and relics. However, I’d like to share with you what I felt about this visit from my personal experience of watching the show performance and some other observation.
I watched the music show before walking to the exhibition halls, as I was more interested in the new forms and functions museum nowadays promote – not only for educational purposes, but also to entertain visitors of all walks of life. I was totally impressed by the quality of ancient music performance, fully immersed in the show and the marvelous acoustic effects which allowed me to travel back to thousands of years ago. Here are a few clips of performances that I recorded:
Nowadays, more and more young people enjoy visiting museums, attending both exhibitions and relevant events like talks and shows which encourage more dynamics and interactive engagement, in contrast to the formulaic stereotypes that visitors just took photos around in museums and left without much understanding and appreciation of such exhibitions. I recall that decades ago I went there seeing the same kinds of lifeless objects without any interest in observing, discovering, and imagining how and why they were relevant to me in history and have impacted on my life, let alone a good level of appreciation. If one has no good knowledge about these exhibits, they would easily feel so bored and want to escape.
This time, when I got it in hand, I found the idea of blind boxes, or mystery boxes, really appealing as I never could have guessed what kind of things were inside until I opened it with a ‘Wow’.
(The added line of characters read ‘拆盲盒的快乐 ~’, meaning the happiness (快乐 kuàikè) of opening (拆 chāi) the blind box (盲盒 mánghé). The photo shows that there is a set of samples of palace maid band designed by Henan Museum.)
I also came across two boys who were giving a video call to their mum, making a live broadcast while walking around. They told their mum what they saw and how they were impressed, and their mum sounded really excited over the phone.
I would also like to attribute this wonderful experience to the advance of modern technology which makes these old objects alive. For example, the amazing lighting and acoustic effect made me feel as if I stood in a traditional Chinese ink painting, exploring a wonderland when I saw many white cranes fly in the sky and heard the stream flowing pleasantly. Wow! Who wouldn’t enjoy this kind of visiting experience?
