Category Archives: painting

Happy Year of the Snake

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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.

CCP2025 Homepage

More events to be uploaded

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.

In Pictures: Pre-CNY Workshops

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The Pre-CNY Workshops commenced with great enthusiasm, setting the tone for the celebrations ahead.

On the afternoon of Monday, 13th January, the Blue Sky Room at One Elmwood welcomed a diverse audience from various cultural and academic backgrounds. Attendees gathered to participate in three engaging workshops — Drawing the Snake, Chinese Calligraphy, and Paper Crafts — in preparation for the arrival of the Year of the Snake.

The Language Centre, in collaboration with One Elmwood Student Experience Team and Queen’s Students’ Union, is keen to invite students and staff members, as well as members of the public, to attend a wide range of events in the coming weeks, featuring

  • The launch of the Chinese New Year celebrations (Wednesday 22 January)
  • Year of the Snake Fair (Wednesday 22 January)
  • Culture talks
  • Film seminar and screening
  • Art exhibitions

For more information and to register click the button below

CCP2025 Homepage

Happy Year of the Snake! 蛇年快乐！

Laba Festival and CNY2025

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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 làbā zhōu), 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.

Pre-CNY Workshops
蛇年新春工作坊

This event is for all QUB students, staff and their families who currently reside in Belfast and NI.

Volunteering for CNY Events
春节活动志愿者招募

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.

Chinese Forum Talks

We always welcome public talks covering a variety of topics from students and scholars at Queen’s and from elsewhere.

We would like to thank you for your support and look forward to welcoming you to join our celebrations that are to come soon. Stay tuned!

Pre-CNY2025 Workshops

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Happy New Year!

The Year of Snake arrives earlier than usual in 2025, falling on Wed 29th January. To kick off another festive celebration following the Christmas and New Year holidays, we warmly invite students, staff, and their families to participate in a series of workshops leading up to this special occasion. These workshops reflect the cherished traditions upheld by Chinese-speaking communities as they prepare to welcome the Spring Festival with cultural practices and festivities.

Registration

The Workshops

Participants can attend all of the workshops, or choose any one to attend. Children under 18 should be accompanied by their guardian.

Drawing the Snake – A fun competition to show your creativity and imagination across cultures of drawing snakes (蛇 shé), beyond the artistic and professional boundary.

Chinese calligraphy – A great chance to taste the writing of Chinese characters such as 福 (fú, fortune) and many other blessing words, as well as your names in Chinese characters.

Paper crafts – A hands-on experience of developing craftsmanship and making traditional decorations for the Chinese New Year celebration.

More events

CCP2025 Homepage
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Drawing the Snake

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As we welcome the Year of the Snake, Queen’s University Belfast invites all students and staff (and their families) to celebrate this Spring Festival with creativity and cultural exploration through our “Drawing the Snake” Competition!

This fun and engaging event encourages participants to showcase their artistic talents and unique interpretations of the Snake, an important symbol in Chinese culture that represents wisdom, transformation, and elegance.

Image credit: Jean Jing

The competition also highlights the famous Chinese idiom 画蛇添足 (huà shé tiān zú), meaning “drawing legs on a snake”. This idiom serves as a reminder to approach creativity with balance, avoiding unnecessary embellishments that might detract from the essence of an idea – just as adding legs to a snake would be superfluous.

Whether you’re inspired by traditional Chinese art, modern interpretations, or your own personal flair, we can’t wait to see your vision of the Snake! Let’s celebrate the artistry, wisdom, and elegance that the Year of the Snake represents.

Requirement

Participants are encouraged to employ diverse drawing styles and mediums (e.g., sketching, oils, watercolor, sculpture, etc.) as long as they effectively convey your perceptions of the snake 蛇 within your own cultural context or Chinese culture. We welcome authentic forms and techniques of presentation, excluding AI-related works.

Workshop

The competition will close on Friday 17th January (extended to Sunday 19th January). A Drawing the Snake workshop for QUB students, staff and their families will take place on Monday 13th January.

Submission

Submissions should consist of one drawing per participant, saved as an electronic copy (JEPG/JPG/PNG format, no exceeding 4MB). Please submit your artwork via the provided submission form, accompanied by a brief bio, including your name, status (e.g., educational/professional background), and a concise description of your illustration.

Submission

More events

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Happy Year of the Loong

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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

CNY Photo Collection

Spring Festival Season Starts

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The Start of Spring (立春) falls on Sunday 4th Feb according to the Chinese lunisolar calendar, which well announces the arrival of Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) celebration in China and elsewhere.

Spring Festival Gala

On Saturday 3rd Feb, the Chinese Students’ Society presented a fabulous Gala of performances to entertain not only QUB students and staff members, but also their families and local communities, with an intoxicating atmosphere that brought people together, no matter what cultural backgrounds they belong to, for a bustling night at the Mandela Hall, One Elmwood.

Culture Talk

The success of the Spring Festival Gala has extended its inviting arms to welcome more audience to join in a great variety of cultural events that are to come, with a culture talk presented by Dr Ibrar Bhatt and Heng WANG on their research reflections on Chinese Muslim Heritage Literacy, which is scheduled between 3 pm and 4:30 pm on Monday, 05/02, at the Auditorium, McClay Library. The talk will also include a display of notable pieces of traditional art collected during fieldwork. QUB colleagues and students are welcome to attend this joint event organised by the Centre for Language Education Research and The Language Centre.

To attend this event, please register via the link or scanning the QR code.

Online Exhibitions

We are also pleased to announce the start of our online exhibitions – Drawing The Dragon Competition and ArtEast Exhibition from Sunday 04/02. The audience are more than welcome to leave your comments to the artworks and share their thoughts in line with the themes.

More Celebrations

Last but not least, we are would like to remind that there are two more big celebrations lined up for this week – The Festival of Chinese New Year hosted by the Graduate School on Wednesday and CNY Launch Day with Interactive Fair on Thursday in One Elmwood. Places are limited so advance bookings are required.

Drawing the Dragon Competition

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To celebrate the upcoming Year of the [Chinese] Dragon, commencing on Saturday, February 10, 2024, we extend a warm invitation to participate in our Drawing Competition centered around the theme of of the [Chinese] Dragon (Chinese character: 龙 (simplified) / 龍 (traditional), pronounced as lóng, similar to ‘long’, also coined in English as ‘loong’).

Beyond its legendary significance in Chinese culture and historical representation as an auspicious symbol wielded by imperial power, the Dragon has evolved into a national totem, symbolizing the offspring of the Chinese nation. Its influence has also extended to neighboring countries such as Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and more.

We cordially invite Queen’s students, staff members, their families, and the local communities to participate in this drawing competition, an opportunity to express your imaginative interpretation of this mythical creature through contemporary artistic mediums.

Participants are encouraged to employ diverse drawing styles and mediums (e.g., sketching, oils, watercolor, sculpture, etc.) as long as they effectively convey your perceptions of 龙/龍 within your own cultural context or Chinese culture. We welcome authentic forms and techniques of presentation, excluding AI-related works.

The competition will close on Sunday 4th Feb, and a Drawing the Dragon session for QUB students, organised by the Student Experience Team, will take place on Friday 2nd Feb.

Submissions should consist of one drawing per participant, saved as an electronic copy (JEPG/JPG/PNG format, no exceeding 2MB). Please submit your artwork via the provided submission form, accompanied by a brief bio, including your name, status (e.g., educational/professional background), and a concise description of your illustration.

We look forward to witnessing your creative expressions!

Submission Form

More events

For more upcoming events that celebrate Year of the Dragon on campus, please visit the home page Chinese Culture Programme 2024.

Call for Volunteering for CNY Celebrations

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Happy International Volunteer Day (05/12)!

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.

Volunteering

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.

Happy Lantern Festival

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While the Lantern Festival is arriving on Sunday 5th February, which signals the end of Chinese Spring Festival season, we are still intoxicated with the celebrative atmosphere socially.

Following the success of the ArtEast Club’s ‘Chinese Brushes in Belfast and Beyond’ Exhibition and Workshop in Ulster Museum on Sunday 29th January, the ArtEast core members Jean, Lily and Wenli are embracing another art exhibition ‘East to West- Magic Brush 2023’ at ISLAND Arts Centre in Lisburn, starting from Saturday 4 Feb 2023 until Wednesday 1 Mar 2023.

All visitors are welcome! We wish the exhibition a great success!

Click here to find the details from Island Arts Centre

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