Please Join Us on Sunday February 7, 2010 for our Chinese New Year Festival!
When? Sunday, February 7, 2010, 12pm-4pm
Where? Stamford Plaza Hotel and Conference Center, Stamford, CT
How? Visit our web site: www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org for tickets; prices go up on Sunday, January 24, at midnight so please buy them soon!
In addition to a cooking demo, Columbia Chinese YoYo Team, crafts for children, face painting, a full, traditional Chinese buffet, an authentic Chinese wedding performance, a book sale, shadow puppets and much more, we are pleased to have author Grace Chang join us as Honorary Guest!
Grace Chang, beloved children's book author of Jin Jin the Dragon and Jin Jin and The Rain Wizard books will be performing and signing books at the Chinese New Year Festival! Grace will be delighting the children with a spectacular magic show with Jin Jin!
In addition to everything else, we’ll be doing a traditional Chinese Shadow Puppet Theater and Wedding Sedan (artfully created by engineering genius Tom Myers and artistic director Katy Chen Myers).
Wear your best Chinese attire and take pictures with the bride and groom! Or, for you romantic folks, Valentines’ Day is the week after our Festival…maybe some creative potential groom would consider proposing to his wished-for future bride in front of our wedding sedan?
Background follows.
Shadow puppet theaters were a form of popular entertainment in rural China for many centuries. The shows were performed in the evenings by travelling artisans using vellum puppets made from animal skins (hide). The stories used in performances were often based on myths, local legends and religious parables. At CLSC, we are using this ancient craft to introduce Chinese history, folktales and mythology to our students.
Wedding sedans were commonly used until this past century to carry brides to their weddings and their future husbands on their wedding day in China. The invited guests often follow the wedding procession through a community to the groom’s family compound for the ceremony and the wedding feast. The wedding sedans were often highly decorated using the colors of luck (red, gold and yellow) and fertility (fuchsia) as well as good luck symbols and calligraphy. The wedding procession following the sedan consists of family of the bride, guests and children dressed in gay attire. Musicians, gong players and young children carrying lanterns and noise makers often precede the sedan to announce the event to the community & invited guests.
The bride is escorted by her female relatives from the veiled sedan and remains veiled until after the wedding ceremony at which time the groom lifts the veil and is the first to see the bride. Chinese weddings symbolize the union of clans; celebrate the continuation of traditions and the promise of future generations to come. In addition to the Lunar New Year celebrations, Chinese weddings are the most important events in every Chinese family.
The 
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