In a two-day event, Simon Fraser University invited its community to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
Feb. 1 was the first day of the Lunar New Year, ushering in the Year of the Tiger.
Simon Fraser University’s Student Engagement and Retention and the Health and Counselling held the events at both the Surrey and Burnaby campuses on Monday and Tuesday.
John So, a coop student at SFU, said the organizers contacted different students clubs to help provide contextual information on the Lunar New Year, including how different places celebrate it, such as China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Korea.
“We are a multicultural community, so we wanted to include some of the cultural context for the Lunar New Year,” explained So, who is the transition events coordinator for the Surrey campus’ games lounge.
One of the activities was creating fai chun, which is a traditional decoration for Lunar New Year to wish people good luck for the new year.
“They can use the pen to try and follow the stroke and then to craft one of the fai chun. The fai chun is simply a blessing message for yourself or your family and friends. People will usually write it and then give it to somebody that they care (about) and then they’ll stick it on their doorway, their office.”
Meantime, Surrey school district elementary students learned calligraphy from their “grandfriends” and worked on crafts to usher in the Year of the Tiger.
At Ray Shepherd Elementary, kindergarten students learned calligraphy with Chinese characters from their “grandfriends, as part of their learning about the Lunar New Year,” while students in another class tried their hand at painting tigers to hang in the classroom.
Students at Rosemary Heights Elementary made Year of the Tiger mosaics, paper dragons an watercolour Lunar New Year artwork and students at James Ardiel Elementary made dragon puppets.
PHOTOS: On Lunar New Year, Chinese offer prayers at temples, Feb. 1, 2022
lauren.collins@surreynowleader.com
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