It snowed in Chengdu lately
As it gets colder,
it gets closer to the new year.
Today at Cogdel School Chengdu,
A new year celebration is in full swing.
Let's go and take a look at it!
As we enter the campus of Cogdel School Chengdu, we hear the drums announcing the start of the event. What catches our eyes are the lively atomosphere. As there are so many booths, I, the editor, feel lost and don't know where to go. Each booth is surrounded by people to experience the appealing festival traiditions.
The whole temple fair is composed of seven booths, namely for Northeast China, Northwest China, North China, South China, East China, Central China, and Southwest China. Students from these regions have hosted these booths, and they are spending great efforts to introduce the traditional Chinese culture and the customs and folk stories about the new year to the Chinese and foreign "tourists".
It seems people are wrapping dumplings over there.With a curious heart, I, the editor, have joined wrapping dumplings. It has been a longterm custom to wrap dumplings during the spring festival in Northeast China. If the northeastern people couldn't eat steaming hot dumplings on new year's eve, then the year is not a complete one.
A few steps ahead, we have come to the Northwest China booth. We see that the students are picking up scissors to cut out various shapes of window flowers. We could see they all have been really engaged in this activity and got themselves totally involved in it. Some students are playing Throw the Handkerchief by the booth. I didn't expect to see this at Cogdel School Chengdu, as I haven't seen it for quite a long time.
As the temple fair is New Year, there can't be an iconic festival traidition. Yes, it's the couplets. The students are using brushes to write couplets themselves for good luck in the new year.
It looks like someone is walking on stilts. Let's take a look. Looking around, I notice there are quite a lot "Stilt Expert". I thought they would be in a hurry and fall down, but I didn't expect that many of them succeeds in one go.
In addition to couplets, lucky charms, etc, another iconic element must be lanterns when we are talking about spring festival. We can see there are quite a lot lantern materials on the East China booth. Different shapes of lanterns, big and small, have been made and some students like it so much that they don't want to move somewhere else.
I can hear some kind of sound, like "pop", "pop". As I get closer, I see someone is whipping a top, which reminds me of my childhood. I haven't played for quite a long time, so I volunteer to join them. As mobile phones are everywhere, we have paid much less attention to these traditional games, which had given us the simplest happiness.
Apart from these games, there are quite some other traidional activities: play diabolo, roll an iron ring, throw red packets and pitch-pot, etc. Many of these activities are the entertainments for modern people during the festivals, and it seems some of these activities are already "out of fashion". But today at Cogdel School Chengdu, all these games and activities are enlivened.
As people leave, the temple fair event has come to an end. However, I, the editor, feel that I haven't enjoyed enough of the game, and I want it to continue, but there are many more events like this at Cogdel School Chengdu. As our school motto is "To Be Proud", it has the conviction to inherit and pass on the best of the Chinese traditional culture with its activities and curricula. As Chinese, we should be proud of our traditional cultureand we also hope that this type of activity could give more of our foreign guests an immersive experience of the traditional Chinese culture, and let them feel the blessings and warmth of our Spring Festival.
As the Spring Festival comes closer, Cogdel School Chengdu would like to wish each and every one of our students and parents, and also you, the reader of this article, a very happy new year! We wish you move forward with high morale and achieve your goals in the new year.
