UN Chinese Language Day

Posted on 26 March 2021 by Liang Wang

Calling all our learners of Chinese at Queen’s

Action Plan for 2021 United Nations Chinese Language Day & First CMG Chinese-language Video Festival Abroad

The first ever Chinese Language Video Festival has been launched to celebrate this year’s United Nations Chinese Language Day.
The festival gives foreigners from across the world the opportunity to enter a competition by submitting a video that celebrates Chinese culture.
Entrants are invited to submit original videos that showcase Chinese calligraphy, Chinese poetry, as well as Chinese culinary culture by recalling their own stories or narrating memories related to spring time.
From CGTN

Theme and format

The video works can include but not limited to the following themes and topics showcasing:

Chinese characters in the Chinese language,
Chinese culinary culture,
Chinese calligraphy,
and the beauty of Chinese poetry.

In addition to the aforementioned topics, candidates can also choose to record their videos by telling their own stories or narrating pieces of memory related to springtime. The format can be flexible, candidates can make their videos through talent show, storytelling, scientific knowledge explanation or Chinese language challenge games etc, as long as the video works are original.

Timetable

18 March-15 April Registration form and video submission
16 April-19 April Final review of works & program packaging
20 April Award Ceremony & broadcasting and streaming of prize-winning video works

Eligibility

The competition is open to all foreigners who love the Chinese culture and language and who have been learning the Chinese language.

How to join?

Application_form Download

Chinese-Language-Day-Action-Plan Download

Thinking of taking a Chinese language course @ Queen’s?

Registration is open until promptly at 17:00 on Thursday 15 April. Classes are expected to be extremely popular and usually fill up quickly, so early registration is strongly recommended.

All classes will commence week beginning Monday 19 April 2021. All language courses will comprise of online practice activities, pre-class videos and weekly, live online teaching, delivered by a tutor to groups of no more than 20 learners. Courses will last for 10 weeks, with 1 x 90 minute live online teaching session each week.

Mandarin Chinese Level 1A
Mandarin Chinese Level 1B
Mandarin Chinese Level 2
Mandarin Chinese Level 3
Mandarin Chinese Level 4
Mandarin Chinese Level 5

Course info & Registration

CCF9/C-LIG April Talk

Posted on 25 March 2021 by Liang Wang

CCF9 – Is Chinese hard to learn? Ask Hart

Aims:

To explore Sir Robert Hart, the first generation of Queen’s graduate and Inspector General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs of the Qing Dynasty, with respect to his trajectory of learning Chinese from his diaries at the Library Special Collections;
To promote Chinese for non-specialist courses to a wider community of students, staff members, as well as members of the public who would have interest in Chinese language and culture;
To introduce Chinese learning resources, approaches and platforms at Queen’s.

Preparation:

Sir Robert Hart Online Exhibition (bilingual)
Mandarin Chinese Course Enrolment (starting from late April 2021)

Happy International Women’s Day

Aside

国际妇女节快乐 (Guójì Fùnǚjié kuàilè)！

International Women’s Day is held on 8th March each year and is a global day which celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. It is a day to mark a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Worldwide, groups and organisations come together to celebrate women’s achievements or to rally for women’s equality.
From Queen’s Gender Initiative

On Friday 5th March, we hosted the last event of CNY2021 celebration, Panel Discussion – The joy of women artists with brush pens during lockdown, which also marked the celebration of International Women’s Day. We were glad that a wide audience of Queen’s students, staff members and members of the public were positively engaged with the artists, sharing their excellent exhibition as well as their positive life attitude.

Top: Lili Li and Jean Jing; Bottom: Jieyu Li and Wenli Zhang

We would also like to express our heart-felt thanks to you who have been engaged, as both contributors and audience, with our CNY celebrations starting from the paper crafts workshop, through the Launch day event featuring performance and a guest talk on Great Books of China, followed by a two-week-long culture forum talks from an array of interesting topics delivered by scholars and research students from across a range of disciplines and diverse cultural backgrounds.

All the recorded talks, including the ArtEast exhibition and discussion, coupled with flashcards of Chinese as language input, are uploaded online for reviewing. We hope this will encourage continuation of such conversations.

Finally, while we are in preparation for our future events, we may wish that the Year of the Ox brings us strength and success!

Review of the CNY2021 Programme

CNY Launch Event – Guest talk
CCF2-Screenshot
CCF3-Screenshot
CCF4-Screenshot
CCF5-Screenshot
CCF6-Screenshot
CCF8-Screenshot
CNY Exhibition Panel

Continue reading →

CNY cloud exhibition

Posted on 1 March 2021 by Liang Wang

Well, all the other CNY celebrations done? Is that all?

Our CNY2021 QUBLC-ArtEast exhibition provides a cloud space for you to appreciate a selection of paintings from the Art East ladies created during the lockdown period.

It’s amazing that they have kept so positive and productive using their magic brush pens. We hope this exhibition will bring you a different feel towards life and the surroundings.

While this exhibition is ongoing we would like to invite you to join our online panel discussion on 05/03 with the ladies to share their painting perspectives and practice, as well as their positive attitude towards life and art. In particular, we would like to see your vote on the best paintings from each of the artists (e.g. Jing-001, LLi-001, Zhang-001, JLi-001) to match against their own picks in the comment box at the bottom of the exhibition page.

From left to right: Jieyu, Jean, Wenli and Lili

This event also marks the celebration of the International Women’s Day (8th March) which has the theme ‘Choose to Challenge’ this year. Feel free to share on your social media using #ChooseToChallenge #IWD2021.

For more IWD-themed events at Queen’s, please visit Queen’s Gender Initiative page.

Feast on more culture talks

Posted on 20 February 2021 by Liang Wang

Looking forward to more CNY celebration events ——

The CNY2021 celebration programme has reached its second height with a full programme of inviting talks prepared by scholars and research students from across a range of disciplines and diverse cultural backgrounds.

Following the Guest Talk delivered by Dr Frances Wood on 12th February, this week we have enjoyed two interesting talks delivered by Qingying Lin, Queen’s graduate and now an MRCI-AHSS China Media Digital Assistant, and Ye Tian, PhD candidate in Translation from School of Arts, English and Languages.

Guest Talk – CNY Launch Event
Guest Talk – CNY Launch Event
CCF2 Qingying LIN
CCF3 Ye TIAN

In the coming week (22nd – 26th February) we welcome you to attend a week-long programme of culture talks, featuring:

Meet our ArtEast artists and their paintings!

View the online ArtEast Exhibition
Join the panel discussion on 5th March

To book a place of the forthcoming talks and the ArtEast panel discussion, or to review the recorded talks, just click the button below.

CNY2021 Celebration Programme

CNY2021 celebrations continue

Posted on 15 February 2021 by Liang Wang

Happy Niu 牛 Year! We have had a great launch of CNY2021 last Friday!

Thanks for many of you who joined in our CNY2021 celebration launch event last Friday. It was a great opportunity for us to get together in a different way to previous years, and it was great fun being with you! In particular, we would like to thank the volunteers who performed for us, and Dr Frances Wood who shared an interesting and inviting topic on Great Books of China. We hope you all have enjoyed it!

If you missed it, you can view the main parts of the programme via the following link.

CNY2021 Launch

What’s on?

At the launch we proudly introduced two exhibitions – the ArtEast Exhibition and Sir Robert Hart Exhibition, both of which are freely accessible online for your appreciation. The ArtEast exhibition will end with an online panel discussion on Friday 5th March. Your thoughts and comments are welcome and we look forward to seeing you in the panel discussion.

What’s coming?

Our CNY Culture Forum 2021 will start from Tuesday 16th February until Friday 26th February, covering a wide range of topics shared by scholars and students from AHSS and EPS. You are mostly welcome to join in some sessions, if not all, to enrich conversations within our multicultural campus. We also welcome more people to contribute to the Chinese Culture Forum which remains an ongoing platform of sharing knowledge and enhancing intercultural communication. For full details and registration, click the button below.

Chinese Culture Forum 2021

CNY Programme out

Posted on 1 February 2021 by Liang Wang

Happy Year of the Ox! 牛年快乐！

With the start of the Year of the Ox fast approaching, we are planning to see the Chinese New Year slightly differently this year with a number of online talks and events in the coming weeks. You are welcome to attend all of these events, including the featured CNY Launch event with cultural performances and an invited talk on Great Books of China (Friday 12/02), as well as a series of online sessions in the coming weeks, covering a diverse selection of topics and a paper crafts workshop, and an art exhibition with panel discussion. For more information on the programme of events, click here:

CNY2021 Celebration Programme

Pre-CNY Workshop

Posted on 28 January 2021 by Liang Wang

Here it comes the first event of the CNY celebration – all welcome!

Workshop facilitator:
Ms Jean JING, ArtEast Club co-founder

Workshop organiser:
Dr Liang WANG, The Language Centre

Aims:

To celebrate the arrival of the Year of the Ox as part of promoting cultural diversity at Queen’s and beyond
To appreciate the art of paper crafts with hands-on experience
To promote Chinese language and culture learning at Queen’s

Preparation:
Audience are expected to prepare some A4-size papers, a pair of scissors, and a pen or marker (black ink) in advance.

Registration (Closed)

For more events, please visit Chinese Culture Programme.

Happy New Year 2021

Posted on 1 January 2021 by Liang Wang

What a wonderful moment that we all want to cherish the start of Year 2021 with our best wishes for a healthy and happy year that, hopefully, is free from anxiety, anger, chaos, hatred and all the other negative feelings and emotions of 2020.

In this day, the Chinese communities, local and global, would express their new year greetings to families, friends, colleagues and even strangers with a heartfelt Happy New Year – 新年快乐 (Xīnnián kuàilè) in Chinese. An alternative expression is 元旦快乐 (Yuándàn kuàilè). While both are official and commonly used, the former is more inclusive as it can be used for the lunar Chinese New Year (aka. Spring Festival) and the latter is exclusively referred to 1st January in its modern sense.

In fact New Year’s Day (元旦) is a new festival to Chinese, although it appeared in the ancient times and meant ‘the first day of a year’. The Chinese character ‘元 (yuán)’ means ‘at the beginning’ or ‘the start of numbers’ and ‘旦’ means ‘the start of a day’. It referred to the first day of Chinese lunar year in history. However, it has been changed into the first day in Gregorian calendar since the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949.

Language points

新 (xīn) – new
年 (nián) – year
快乐 (kuàilè) – happy
元 (yuán) – the start of numbers, the beginning
旦 (dàn) – the start of the day; the component ‘日’ part refers to the sun and the component ‘一‘ refers to the horizon. Hence, 旦 means the sun rising from the horizon to make the start of a day.
元旦 (Yuándàn) – New Year’s Day; the first day of the year

A taste of tanghulu

Posted on 25 November 2020 by Liang Wang

– The mostly favoured flavour of wintry snack in Northern China

If you think that in winter a hot coffee (or tea) is all that you need to treat yourself while outing in China, especially in the north, you may have missed your sweet memory. Our Chinese LIG volunteer, Xiaohui, whose hometown in South China, is receiving pre-service training in Beijing currently. She will tell you what she has discovered in her spare time wandering around capital city, as shown below.

Have you been to China and seen this? Are there anything similar to this in your own country?

What’s this and what’s it called?
What’s it made of?
How to eat it?
What does it taste like?
How much does it cost?

Now here is what Xiaohui explains –

Name in Chinese: 糖葫芦（冰糖葫芦）
Pinyin: tánghúlu (bīngtánghúlu)
Lit: sugar bottle gourd (rocky sugar bottle gourd); 冰 (bīng, ice), 糖 (táng, sugar/candy), 葫芦 (húlu, bottle gourd)
Name in English: candy hawberry (or candy fruit)
Ingredients: typically 山楂 (shānzhā, Chinese hawberry) or more recently a variety of other fruits like 桔子 (júzi, mandarin orange), 苹果 (píngguǒ, apple), 猕猴桃 (míhóutáo, kiwi), 草莓 (cǎoméi, strawberry), 香蕉 (xiāngjiāo, banana), and many more; 糖浆 (tángjiāng, sugar syrup)
Eat as it is, one by one – similar to eating BBQ skewers but very different feel – it is best to eat in winter as the sugar coating is hardened by the cold weather as if one’s tasting ice
Sweet (from sugar coating), sweet and sour (from fruits)!
Only 7 块 (kuài, the colloquial of RMB yuan) per skewer (less than one pound)

Additional information
It has nothing to do with fruit gourd in ingredients but that it somewhat resembles the shape of bottle gourds put together. Hence, the name.