Happy Lunar New Year!

February 11, 2022

Academics

GNS

The Senior School Culture Club took the lead when it came to preparing a fantastic Lunar New Year Assembly. Although students couldn’t come together in Denford Hall to celebrate, they were treated to multiple virtual performances by members of the Culture Club, Mandarin classes, and Senior School students who wanted to share information about Lunar New Year with their peers.

“I feel like we put together a really good assembly for it having to be virtual,” said Miia Bekker ’22. “We had to change it to virtual around the Winter Break, but we just rolled with it.”

With many people involved, the students had to find ways to manage and facilitate the pre-recorded performances.

Huilin Shan ’22 performed the Guzheng (古筝), which she started learning for her Grade 10 Personal Project. The instrument has played important roles in Chinese history and folk music, and modern instruments have developed from the ancient guzheng.

The Grade 11 Mandarin Class put together a video celebrating the many different countries that celebrate Lunar New Year, and their presentation included interviews and stories about the Lunar New Year experience in Taiwan, Beijing, Hong Kong and Vietnam.

Candy Du ’25, Cindy Yu ’25, Lily Kang ‘23 and Jo-An Chia ’23 prepared a Chinese dance for their performance.

As well, Alice Li ’22, Jason Zhang ’22 and Huilin sang Thereafter (后来) accompanied by Zane Huang ’22 on guitar. Sean Shen ’22 edited the video together.

“There’s always bumps with planning, with things missing and stuff,” said Sean. “But overall, I think we managed to fill the gaps and create the assembly, it was all about communication.”

After watching the performances from their peers, students took part in a red paper activity, where they created “Window Flowers,” to hang on classroom windows. Students were given instructions that varied in degrees of difficulty.

“It was great,” said Sean. “I think people enjoyed it, and the paper activity at the end people liked, and some even tried the difficult instructions.”

Congratulations to the Culture Club for creating an entertaining and educational assembly!