Happy New Year 2023

Posted on 1 January 2023 by Liang Wang

Bye 2022, Hi 2023!

A calendar on a desk, displaying January 1st 2023, together with some other stationery and a flower vase with some tulips. — Photo credit: Anqi HUANG

As 2022 drew to an end, we wish everyone a happy and healthy 2023! We also would like to remind you that the Chinese New Year (CNY) – Year of the Rabbit – is fast approaching in three weeks’ time. How are you going to celebrate it?

CNY celebrations at Queen’s

We are pleased to let you know that the celebration programme at Queen’s has been underway, with a range of events to entertain all – students, staff members, as well as members of the public. You may find the CNY2023 Programme page via the link below and here are some activities for you to kick a start while more will be uploaded shortly.

CCP2023 Homepage

Celebrations elsewhere in Belfast

In addition to our celebrations on campus, we would like to make you aware of the social celebration of Chinese New Year in Belfast, operated by Success Dragon and Lion Dance Association, a registered charity in Northern Ireland (Charity no. 105478), who had been supporting Queen’s celebrations before pandemic.

The Chinese New Year Celebration returns to the Ulster Hall Belfast on Sunday 22nd January 2023 celebrating the Year of Rabbit. Come to enjoy a day full of fun and joy, rich in Colours and Culture. With over 12 global dances and music not to be missed.
盛大的中國新年慶典再次重臨 Ulster Hall Belfast。日期是一月廿二號星期日。超過十二個各式的民族表演包括舞龍舞獅，中國功夫和中國的傳統舞蹈表演等。請從速預訂門票！
Alan Lui, Master of The success Dragon & lion dance association

Please note that we are not involved in performances and ticket booking issues. All enquiries should be sent to the Association directly, following the contact information on the poster.

Chinese Brushes in Belfast and Beyond

Posted on 14 December 2022 by Liang Wang

On Sunday 29th January the Ulster Museum will hosts this event including a selection of ArtEast NI members’ paintings displayed at the hall area from 12 pm on, and a talk/panel discussion at 2 pm on their themes, styles, and techniques, as well as their attitudes towards challenging lives throughout the pandemic period. There will also be an interactive workshop from 3 pm to encourage audience, especially those families with kids, to have some hands-on practice (e.g. painting, calligraphy, paper crafts) under the guidance of the artists.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is ArtEast-Exhibition-UM-Poster.jpg — **See the event on Ulster Museum What’s On**

Supported by The Language Centre at Queen’s, the Ulster Museum and the Chinese Welfare Association NI, this half-day event is family-friendly and free for all.

Photo album

To view the ArtEast NI online exhibition starting from Sunday 22nd January when the Year of the Rabbit starts, please click the button below.

CNY23 ArtEast Online Exhibition

CCP2023 Homepage

CNY2023 Drawing Competition

Posted on 9 December 2022 by Liang Wang

The Language Centre has been proactively leading a number of language and culture-associated events, including the branded Chinese New Year celebrations, at Queen’s for years and we are looking to further engaging with students, staff members, as well as members of the public, to enable better inclusion and interaction.

To welcome the Year of the Rabbit (starting from Sun 22^nd January 2023), we would like to invite you to join in this CNY2023 Drawing Competition with the theme of the Rabbit (Chinese character: 兔, pronounced as tù, similar to ‘too/two’). We believe that the image of rabbit is widely used in many arts forms, literatures, and modern designs in both Chinese and many other cultures, though the cultural connotations vary from one to another.

The drawing styles can be of any medium (such as sketching, oils, watercolour, sculpture, etc.) so long as they represent and reflect on your perceptions of the rabbit in your own or Chinese culture. All forms and techniques of presentation are encouraged.

The competition starts from the date when it is advertised and will close on Friday 13^th January 2023. The finished drawings (one drawing each participant) should be saved as an electronic copy (JEPG/JPG format, max. 2MB) and emailed as an attachment to Dr Liang WANG at Liang.Wang@qub.ac.uk, using ‘CNY2023 Drawing Competition’ in the subject line. In the email, please briefly include a bio, including your name, your status (e.g. educational/professional background) and the illustration of your idea on the presentation.

All the entries will be uploaded online for exhibition. A judge panel will make a decision on the result which will be announced shortly after the closing date. The winners’ drawings may be used for further promotional purposes with acknowledgement. Prizes will be subsequently given out for collection.

Chinese course enrolment and call for volunteers

Posted on 13 September 2022 by Liang Wang

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.

Class schedule and registration links are accessible via Language Centre website.

Chinese language courses are offered from level 1 to level 5.

Course details and registration

Call for volunteers

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.

Volunteering

Read the Chinese version here.

Eggcellent Easter

Posted on 17 April 2022 by Liang Wang

Happy Easter Break! 复活节假期快乐！

Did you buy some eggs or egg-shaped chocolate for Easter? They look so cute and tasty that one can hardly resist the temptation not to buy one.

Chocolate eggs in a supermarket. *Image@LiangWANG*

But why it has to be eggs or egg-shaped thing during Easter? Here’s the explanation:

‘The egg, an ancient symbol of new life, has been associated with pagan festivals celebrating spring. From a Christian perspective, Easter eggs are said to represent Jesus’ emergence from the tomb and resurrection. Decorating eggs for Easter is a tradition that dates back to at least the 13th century, according to some sources. One explanation for this custom is that eggs were formerly a forbidden food during the Lenten season, so people would paint and decorate them to mark the end of the period of penance and fasting, then eat them on Easter as a celebration.’
History

Besides buying ready-made egg decorations from shops, painting eggs is one of the most popular activities for not only those families with young children, but also others who want to have creative experience with lots of fun during Easter. International student ambassadors from Queen’s recently joined an egg decorating event, organised by AHSS (Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences), to celebrate their Easter on campus.

Key words in Chinese

复活节 (Fùhuó jié) – Easter
装饰 (zhuāngshì) – to decorate
绘画 (huìhuà) – to paint
彩绘 (cǎihuì) – colour painting
蛋 (dàn) – egg
巧克力 (qiǎokèlì) – chocolate

How did it go? We invite one of the International Student Ambassadors, Xiuying, to share her experience with you.

Xiuying DENG is currently a postgraduate student in Marketing from Queen’s University Management School. Images@XiuyingDENG

I was so lucky to be invited and it was such an amazing experience! Drawing is not my strong point at all, to be honest, so I felt a bit nervous before getting started. Here I chose to paint a chick at first, which is really out of the ordinary with different colors because it wore a pair of glasses HAHA! Then, I “dressed up” three plastic eggs. As you can see, some were with colored ribbons and some were with small spots.

At the end of the event, we all voted together to see which was the best. Fortunately, I was awarded a souvenir by Queen’s. I felt that my drawing was not that bad. Anyway, it was an unforgettable experience for me to celebrate Easter in the UK, especially with the cohort of 10 lovely student ambassadors!

We hope you have had fun together with us. If you have done your own egg paintings or other decorations, you are very welcome to share your photos here for a collection of ‘eggcellent’ show.

Easter bunny and eggs – Image@XiaoxuanXIA

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
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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.