CI was Invited to Hold a Community Cultural Day

On 25 September, the CI was invited by the Shirley community to hold a community cultural day at Friends of St. James' Park. A team of six volunteers, led by core teacher Ying Fu, set up stands to introduce and demonstrate Chinese culture to the community through the use of clay sculptures, paper fans, shuttlecocks, Peking Opera facial masks and traditional costumes.

As soon as the event started, there was a long queue in front of our stands. Volunteers Yannan Zeng and Yutong Zhang taught the children to follow the steps to make the naive Chinese national treasure, the giant panda. After volunteer Lulu Zhang demonstrated how to fold a paper fan, the children were excited to learn and soon finished beautiful fans.

The park visitors and staff at the other stands were drawn to join in as Ms Ying Fu demonstrated a variety of fancy kicks one after another. In front of the Peking Opera facial mask painting stand, volunteer Yaozheng Zhao was guiding the children to pick up various colours of crayons and draw their own creative facial masks. Volunteer Jingwen Wang briefly introduced the traditional Chinese costumes of cheongsam and hanfu, and brought the cheongsam and hanfu for the children to try on and take photos.

After the event, the organiser sent an email praising the highly collaborative nature of the CI team and the fun nature of the workshops, which not only entertained the community, but also helped the children to develop their hands-on skills, as well as increase their knowledge and experience of Chinese culture. It is reported that the community invited CI to participate in its Easter cultural activities in April this year, which was well received by the public.