Launch of the Chinese New Year celebrations (Wednesday 22 January) – open to all students and staff
With the arrival of the Year of the Snake on Wednesday 29 January, we would like to send our best wishes to all those who celebrate it and its variations (Lunar New Year in some Asian countries) and invite staff and students to join together on Wednesday 22 January for the main launch event, as below.
This is a collaborative event, organised by The Language Centre, One Elmwood Student Experience Team, Queen’s Students’ Union, CSSA, MSSNI, Ppi Belfast, and Queen’s iRISE Staff Network, supported by People and Culture Diversity and Inclusion team.
12:00 – 13:00 Welcome Reception (Auditorium, McClay Library) –please register for this here.
13:00 – 13:30 Dragon Dance and Parade – departing from McClay Library through Lanyon, finishing at One Elmwood Student Centre and Students’ Union)
13:30 – 16:00 Cultural Fair and Performances (One Elmwood Foyer – Ground Floor) –no registration required
Chinese Culture Forum
The celebration of the Year of the Snake also announces the start of our Chinese Culture Forum in 2025, with the following talks contributed by Queen’s staff and students, including visiting academics and students from a range of disciplines. Check the programme button and book the events that you are interested in.
We are open to proposals for a variety of events that you would wish to help with or contribute to developing our CCP2025 programme. Please do not hesitate to submit your proposals via the form below and we will get in touch with you in due course after your submission.
Happy Laba Festival (腊八节 Làbā jié)! Falling on the 8th day of the 12th month (called 腊月 làyuè) in the lunar calendar, this Laba Festival is often seen as the signal of the arrival of the Chinese New Year (aka. Spring Festival 春节 Chūn jié in China).
Laba congee cooked | Image@LiangWANG
On the day, in many places across China, mainly the north, northwest and southeast, people cook and eat Laba congee (腊八粥 làbāzhōu), typically made of rice, mixed beans, various nuts and dried fruits, etc., all of which are believed to be good for health. Having Laba congee can keep one feel warm and spirited in the cold and wet weather.
With the Laba Festival arriving today on 7th January this year, one can be certain that the Chinese New Year – Year of the Snake (蛇年 Shénián) starting from 29th January, is just around the corner.
Call for CNY participation
While we are busy preparing for the CNY2025 Programme, we would like to invite you to join us in a few activities that can bring the celebrative elements together. The following calls for participation are totally voluntary and you are welcome to attend one or all, as long as you feel like relevant and meaningful.
This event is for staff and students at Queen’s to volunteer at our series of events such as the CNY Gala, CNY Interactive Fair, Culture Workshops, etc.
The 龙 Lóng (or Loong / Chinese Dragon) has just arrived at Queen’s!
What an exciting day to welcome the auspicious 龙 Lóng (or Loong / Chinese Dragon) to Queen’s One Elmwood on Thursday 8th February, regardless of the blustery weather (which was said to be accompanying the Loong)!
Dragon Dance performed by QUB Success Lion Dance Club at One Elmwood social space.
Over 60 staff and student representatives from a range of diverse cultural backgrounds celebrated the launch of Year of The Chinese Dragon programme, jointly organised by the Language Centre, iRISE Staff Network, Student Experience Team, The Graduate School, Chinese Students and Scholars Association, supported by Diversity, Inclusion and Staff Wellbeing Unit, and partially sponsored by the QUB Annual Fund.
Professor Margaret Topping, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement, welcomed the value of contact between different languages and cultures for the benefit of enhanced mutual respect through intercultural exchange.
Professor Margaret Topping, PVC (Global Engagement), delivered a welcome speech to the audience.
We wish that this celebration programme on the Year of The Chinese Dragon, as part of our Celebrating Cultural Diversity at Queen’s scheme, will make a contribution to the multicultural campus development, which sees differences as strength to foster an environment of open-mindedness and acceptance.
The Launch event featured student/alumni performances including guzheng music and classical dance, QUB Staff Wellbeing Choir’s singing of both Chinese and local songs, and the bustling and exciting Dragon Dance inside One Elmwood, followed by an interactive CNY Fair with cultural displays.
Guzheng performance by DENG Wei, QUB graduate in Arts Management
Classical dance performed by XU Xiaowen, MSc candidate in Construction and Project Management
Celebrating with the performers
Chinese songs sung by Staff Wellbeing Choir
Group photo after Dragon Dance at One Elmwood
CNY Fair with God of Fortune and Student Experience Team
The CNY celebration programme includes a three-week-long events and it welcomes all students and staff members to choose their favourate ones to attend in the coming two weeks. For full programme and registration links, please visit CCP2024 Homepage.
More photos will be added to our FB account and if you wish to share yours with us, please attach them via the Comment box below, or click the link for multiple uploading
How exciting when you were selected for a panel discussion on your research work and experience as part of your postgraduate degree study at Queen’s?
Today we invite Ruinan PENG (彭瑞楠), MA in Arts Management 2022-2023, from School of Arts, English and Languages, to share her wonderful experience of being invited for the Arts Management Showcase event on 7th November 2023.
What’s it about the Arts Management Showcase event?
The MA Arts Management Showcase is actually part of the annual Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Festival of Social Science, which provides a great opportunity to display outstanding Queen’s MA Arts Management students’ research to the professional circles and the public for a wider social impact.
Click here to view the whole programme of ESRC Festival of Social Science 2023
At the event, the convention is that a senior guest speaker would be invited to share his or her research on the culture and arts field, followed by a presentation of selected outstanding postgraduate research work and a round-table discussion with the guest speaker. Therefore, this showcase event is an ideal opportunity to demonstrate Arts Management teaching and research outcomes at Queen’s and communicate with professional researchers in arts management from outside Queen’s.
What was your experience on the day?
As one of the four student speakers, I presented my dissertation (学位论文 xuéwèi lùnwén) which was about curating (策展 cèzhǎn) and audience engagement (观众参与 guānzhòng cānyù) in contemporary art exhibitions (当代艺术展 dāngdài yìshùzhǎn), exploring how curating constructs audiences’ experiences and facilitates audience engagement in contemporary art exhibitions. Alongside me, Dr. Christina Ballico, and my classmates, Holly and Stephanie, presented their research in terms of ‘music city’, ‘arts engagement of the working class (工人阶级 gōngrén jiējí)’, and ‘music education development in Northern Ireland’. Their presentations were interesting and insightful, illustrating a bigger picture and sketching out the details about how to develop an inclusive, equal cultural engagement for cities, artists, and the public. Also, their research methods and case studies expanded my knowledge of conducting arts management both in the academic and professional domains.
There was a Q&A panel and a networking (会后交流 huìhòu jiāoliú) session following the end of the presentation.
Ruinan at the panel discussion | Photo provided by Ruinan PENG
What was your feeling about such an experience?
It was not only a rewarding moment to ‘show off’ my efforts in my independent research but also a lovely reunion with my supervisors, classmates, and friends. Reviewing my experience of studying at Queen’s, I had a strong sense of achievement (成就感 chéngjiùgǎn) and gained many opportunities to improve my language and intercultural skills, and develop my research abilities, thanks to the small-scale class, diverse classmate backgrounds, high-standard course programme, and professional and dedicated teachers. I treated this event as my reward for my study at Queen’s and hope that more Chinese students at Queen’s step onto this showcase stage in the future.
Ruinan at the panel discussion | Photo provided by Ruinan PENG
Author: Ruinan PENG Editors: Lauren McShane and Liang WANG
The Language Centre is organising a Chinese New Year Celebration Information Session to mark the International Volunteer Day (05/12) on Monday 04/12 (13:00-15:00) at the Auditorium, McClay Library. If you are interested in what’s going to happen and how you can get involved, feel free to pop in and join us in the session.
Call for volunteers
As the Year of the Dragon (龙年春节) is arriving in Feb 2024, we are looking for talented students and staff members to volunteer for our Chinese New Year celebration at Queen’s. It could be in the form of a variety of cultural performances, or language/culture-related topics and skills, and is open to both Chinese-speaking and non-Chinese speaking volunteers.
If you would like to express your interest in volunteering for the preparation and delivery of the proposed events, feel free to scan the QR code, or click the Form URL below to submit your interest.
We also look forward to working with you in our future language and cultural events.
Language Centre Course Enrolment
The second enrolment for courses, including Chinese, to start in January 2024 has now been available online. Anyone wishing to learning Chinese can find relevant course timetable and registration information from The Language Centre Homepage.
Queen’s Media and Broadcast PG students (Mengjia QU, Jiaqi LI and Xiaoya WU) working onsite. Photo: Liang WANG
Call for volunteers 常招志愿者
We are looking for talented students and staff members to volunteer for our Chinese language and cultural events at Queen’s. It could be in the form of a variety of cultural performances, or language/culture-related topics and skills, and is open to both Chinese-speaking and non-Chinese speaking volunteers.
We look forward to working with you in our future events.
What does International Women’s Day mean to you? Different people may have different focuses. At Queen’s, the campaign theme for this year is #EmbraceEquity
Imagine a gender equal world. A world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. A world that’s diverse, equitable, and inclusive. A world where difference is valued and celebrated. Together we can forge women’s equality. Collectively we can all #EmbraceEquity
Today, we are pleased to introduce WANG Xinxin, a Queen’s School of Law student (LLM candidate in International Commercial & Business Law) to share her feel of being a departing daughter from her family, a female international student with great passion for her study and intercultural life in Belfast and elsewhere, through quoting the lines from one of her favourite ancient poems, the Ballad of Mulan.
We also thank WANG Xinxin for kindly sharing her Instagram account with us, which includes a video clip of greeting messages to her family and to all, in Chinese. If you have difficulties in understanding Mandarin, just click this Instagram post to read the English lines she added in the comment area.
We would like to invite all to come join in this is a special day of greeting and a call for celebration. Tell us how you celebrate this special day in the reply box below. We would love to hear more stories from you, too.
Congratulations to the winners: Yilin CAO (曹意琳), Fangzhou YANG (杨方舟), Ya LI (李亚) for their Documentary ‘The Gift Tree‘!
About the prize
Anjool Maldé (7 July 1984 – 5 July 2009)Anjool Maldé Memorial Trust
Anjool Maldé (Jools to his friends and colleagues) […] lived a short but rich life, […] who touched so many lives in special, endearing and enduring ways.
Anjool Maldé Award is as a legacy to Jools’ memory, the Anjool Maldé Memorial Trust (The AMMT) awards prize money to the UK’s brightest best to reward, inspire and celebrate outstanding talent.
Co-hosting the Anjool Maldé Young Journalist Award, Queen’s University Belfast has jointly hosted the award ceremony at Queen’s Film Theatre to three Chinese students – Yilin CAO, Fangzhou YANG, Ya LI – all from School of Arts, English and Languages, majoring in Media and Broadcast Production.
About the Documentary
The documentary, ‘The Gift Tree‘, tells the story of Belfast’s ‘One Million Trees‘ environmental programme against the backdrop of Net-Zero Carbon Belfast plan. We made this documentary with the hope that it can reflect the value of a Net-Zero Carbon city and the need to protect the environment, thus calling on everyone to contribute to environmental protection.
Yilin, Fangzhou and Ya
In retrospect, the winners felt proud of being able to participate in, and contribute to, the competition that Queen’s University is involved in as a co-host. They further explained:
At one point, we saw an advertisement for admissions at Queen’s University, reporting that a student had won the award. This news aroused our great interest in choosing Queen’s for this course. We were really really amazed at seeing our names written on the award certificate this year. To be honest, being international students, producing a documentary and winning the prize takes a lot more effort than any home students will do because of the language barrier and communication across cultures. We had to get to know the places as quickly as possible, find the right people for interviews and understand and select the stories that deserve to be told, which we hadn’t built up in our experiences before. We were really thrilled when we finished the documentary. We are delighted to have won the 2022 Anjool Maldé Journalism Award for our documentary, thanks to the hard work of the three of us and the guidance of our supervisors and teaching assistants.
Winners as above with Dr Kurt Taroff (Head of School of Arts, English and Languages) and Frank Delaney (Subject Lead for Broadcast Production). Photo courtesy QUB.
Winners as above with Dr Kurt Taroff (Head of School of Arts, English and Languages) and Frank Delaney (Subject Lead for Broadcast Production). Photo courtesy QUB.
Certificate of Excellence – Anjool Maldé Journalism Award 2022
As well as collaborating on this documentary, the three of us are also very good friends in life. Although we have shared expertise in film production, we have diverse areas of specialism, which has served us well in the making of the documentary. Together we completed the shooting plan and the subsequent editing of the entire documentary, including but not limited to on-site interviews, video shooting, drone shooting, video production, script editing, post-editing, music and sound effects production. This is our learning practice in MA Media and Broadcast Production at Queen’s University Belfast. The process of making this documentary enabled us to gain a wealth of practical experience in documentary production. The honour of receiving the Anjool Maldé Journalism Award is the best proof our efforts and a testament to the value of this work.
The Anjool Maldé Journalism Award means a lot to the three of us. It’s a recognition of our abilities and a huge motivation for us to continue with the industry of media production. Bearing this in mind, in the future we will shoulder responsibility as media workers and journalists and continue to explore valuable stories and express them in the best form of media.
Yilin, Fangzhou and Ya
Watch the Documentary
Thanks to Yilin, Fangzhou and Ya’s kind offer, we would like to share with you all the documentary ‘The Gift Tree’ for appreciation. If you have any thoughts, ideas, and comments regarding the producers and the documentary, please leave your message in the box below. We are happy to pass it on to the contributors.
With the approaching of the new semester we are pleased to announce that the Language Centre course enrolment starts at 00:30 on Thursday 1st September. We offer over 80 classes in 14 different languages, including Chinese, that have both online and in person teaching. All classes will commence week beginning Monday 10 Oct 2022.
Online registration will be closed on Thursday 6 Oct and we welcome all to make an early registration as courses are extremely popular and fill up quickly.
We are looking for talented students and staff members to volunteer for our Chinese language and cultural events at Queen’s. It could be in the form of a variety of cultural performances, or language/culture-related topics and skills, and is open to both Chinese-speaking and non-Chinese speaking volunteers.
We look forward to working with you in our future events.
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.
