CIG celebrates the Chinese New Year of the Ox online

2021 is the Year of the Ox, and this year’s Chinese Spring Festival is also different from previous years. Although there is no annual Spring Festival Gala, CIG still prepared a variety of activities online and offline. The Spring Festival of the Ox is special, but still warm. Teachers and students, both at home and abroad, are united by the traditions.  

(1) Celebrating the Spring Festival in Chinese class

The extension of the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland has also affected the full recovery of our in-class Chinese course. Students in Geneva recently started online classes again.

During the Chinese class on February 5th, teacher Jing YUAN and the children celebrated the arrival of the New Year online with Chinese traditional hand-cut paper.

So far CIG Lausanne and Nyon maintain in-class Chinese course. The teachers led the students to celebrate the Spring Festival of the Year of the Ox with numerous activities such as poem recitation, learning New Year greetings, making handicrafts, writing Spring Festival couplets etc.

CIG Principal Mrs. Zhimin SUN made a PPT on Chinese New Year cultural knowledge, turning the language class into a cultural class. She explained why the date of Chinese New Year is different every year and told stories about the Spring Festival, as well asvarious customs and traditions. The students listened with great interest.

CIG also ordered mascots for the Year of the Ox for each student, and prepared Spring Festival couplets and Fu characters for the teacher.

On the first day of the New Year, CIG teachers also gathered at Zoom for video greetings and exchange of teaching experience.

(2) CIG Director Mrs. Jun CHU and teachers participated in the Happy Spring Festival-2021 “Cloud Gathering” organized by Beijing Federation of Overseas Chinese 

On 5th February 2021, the Beijing Federation of Overseas Chinese and the city's overseas Chinese-related units and organizations of all levels jointly held a Happy Spring Festival-2021 "Cloud Gathering" event. More than a thousand overseas Chinese from more than 50 countries on five continents participated in the event online, including CIG Director Mrs. Chu and CIGteachers.

CIG teachers and students from in-class course recorded New Year’s greetings videos, and sent their blessings to Chinese people around the world through the “Cloud Gathering” event.

(3) Heart-to-heart among teenagers at home and abroad

The pandemic blocked opportunities for overseas teenagers to participate in the summer camps in China, but there are more and more opportunities for online communications.

The China Children’s Center under the All-China Women’s Federation and the Education Office of All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese co-organized Chinese elementary and middle school students to pair up with overseas Chinese students, in order to exchange Spring Festival blessings. Four teenagers from CIG, Wu ZHANG, Ruixuan YANG, Chenao WU and ZiaoWU took part. The students met online with love and joy. 

Chinese Language and Culture Education Foundation of China is going to host the 4th Global Chinese Recitation Competition. CIG sent blessing videos and entries. We also call on Chinese communities and schools around the world to actively participate in this event.

On February 8th, CIG Director Mrs. Chu accepted a video interview with CCTV Global Mandarin, and expressed her best wishes to everyone on the occasion of the Chinese New Year.