A ceremony to celebrate Su Shi (also named Su Dongpo)’s 986th birthday was held in Danzhou, Hainan on January 10.
This event, which aimed to celebrate Su Shi's birthday, remember our ancestors, and continue the thousand-year-old cultural tradition, has become a well-known local cultural event.
Engaging our students in this major heritage event further enriches the essence of Harrow Innovation Leadership Academy (HILA)'s bilingual education.
Harrow students learn the Song Dynasty rituals in advance under the guidance of their teacher.
In front of Su Shi's sculpture, amid music performed on traditional Chinese stringed and woodwind instruments, everyone made a bow with hands folded in front to pay tribute to Su Shi, one of the most revered, prodigious figures in Chinese culture.
After the memorial ceremony, the event to celebrate Su Shi’s 986th birthday began, which comprise four parts – Poetry and Music, Song Dynasty Life Style, Calligraphy and Poetic Couplet, and Su Shi’s Life Stories and his Poetry.
Harrow students and other visitors enjoyed a series of Song Dynasty-style performances by the Hainan Fanghua Orchestra, including those adapted from Su Shi's poems Crossing the Sea on the Night of June 20th and Be Still.
Burning incense, arranging flowers, making tea, and hanging paintings, the performers reproduced the elegant life of the literati during the Song Dynasty to remember this great poet.
Calligraphy and Poetic Couplet
The students appreciated the Spring Festival couplets created by famous calligraphers and learned Chinese New Year culture together.
Su Shi’s Life Stories and his Poetry
In front of the Dongpo Pavilion, Harrow students, dressed in the Song Dynasty clothing, listened to the life stories told by Professor Haibin, a scholar who studies Su Shi. Then the students also learned and recited the poem Farewell to the People of Li in Hainan Island written by Su Shi.
Unique Bilingual Learning
In China, the bilingual teaching model has become the mainstream of international education, due to the significant advantages of bilingual education.
The bilingual curriculum at HILA helps students develop the ability to use both English and Chinese flexibly through an immersive, bilingual learning environment in different areas such as daily social communication, cultural understanding and academic language.
Behind language lies a sense of identity with oneself. For Chinese students, consolidating the foundation of Chinese language learning is conducive to forming a healthy and fulfilling self-identity. In addition, a number of studies in contemporary linguistics and cognitive psychology have confirmed that people's cognitive competence and thinking ability are determined by their native language level. It is proved that the level of one's mother tongue has a noticeable influence on second language acquisition. Therefore, international schools should understand that the essence of bilingual education lies in the balanced development of two languages, not the development of one language over the other, or even the development of foreign languages such as English at the expense of the mother tongue.
International education should be rooted in Chinese culture and oriented to the world. The HILA curriculum inherits the teaching methods adopted by Harrow School, UK, and also is committed to the balanced bilingual development of students and the realization of the goal of Holistic Education.
