The Adult Student Center and Children’s Center celebrated the Year of the Dragon as a part of the Chinese New Year on Jan. 23.
Once every month, various offices within IU Southeast take turns hosting the Diversity Brown Bag Lunch series to raise awareness on diversity.
Wanda Gregory, coordinator of the Children’s Center, explained the purpose of the event.
“Its purpose is to host a program on a diversity topic or issue that the students are interested in or could learn from,” Gregory said.
To celebrate the year of the dragon, children who attended made arts and crafts.
“We made tangrams of dragons, paper lanterns, dragon fans, scratch colored dragons and a Chinese calendar for the year each child was born,” Gregory said. “We also made paper fortune cookies to talk about the Chinese belief of what gives them good fortune.”
While making crafts, children and students discussed the difference between the American and Chinese New Year.
“They got to learn not only why the two holidays are held differently,” Gregory said, “but also why the Chinese [New Year] is a longer holiday and what happens on each day of the Chinese holiday.”
The first day of the 2012 Chinese New Year does not actually start until Jan. 23, 2012 in China, since that is the day there is a new moon and is the first day of the first lunar month in the Chinese Lunar Calendar system. The 2012 year is actually the 4,709 Chinese year.
The dragon is one part of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac and is related to the Chinese calendar.
After crafts, children and students got the chance to mimic the Dragon Dance, a form of traditional dance and performance in Chinese culture. The Dragon Dance is a team of people carrying the dragon, or an image of the dragon, on poles. A dragon dance can be composed of up to 50 people.
However, that many bodies were not available for this Dragon Dance.
“We did not have a good turn out as the weather kept students, faculty and staff from coming to take part,” Gregory said.
By TAYLOR FERGUSON
Staff
tayfergu@ius.edu