Dancing, treats and a celebration of Chinese culture is what you’ll find on the bookstore lawn on Thursday from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
Cal State Long Beach’s Confucius Institute is hosting its first Chinese New Year celebration, offering activities and demonstrations of Chinese tradition open to all students.
The Confucius Institute at CSULB is a non-profit organization that promotes the development of Chinese culture, language, tradition and arts for students, faculty and the surrounding community.
The goal of the celebration is to “bring the Chinese culture and language onto campus while building relationships and friendships,” said Heidi Zhang, director of the Confucius Institute.
Students will be exposed to traditional Chinese New Year cultural practices with demonstrations and learning activities. Attendees can learn how to make Chinese paper lanterns and watch a traditional dragon and lion dance.
Students can play shuttlecock, a popular Chinese children’s game that resembles hacky sack but is decorated with rooster feathers. The Institute will also provide hongbao for the first hundred students, which are red packages filled with candy that symbolize good luck and fortune for the new year — which is the year of the rooster.
The final day of the Chinese New Year celebration is Saturday, but the Confucius Institute chose to throw the celebration Thursday so it can be experienced by more students.
Having just been established in November of last year, the Confucius Institute has already provided a variety of services to the Long Beach community. They held calligraphy and Chinese culture classes for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at CSULB with teachers and volunteers from China teaching the courses.
“We really want to benefit the students on campus so we try to offer a lot of free activities,” said Zhang.
They also plan to host a summer camp this year where children will have the opportunity to learn about the Chinese language and heritage for the duration of two weeks.