On the evening of Friday, 27th February, our delayed Chinese Chess and Calligraphy evening kicked off at BISC. Due to the heavy snow in early spring, (one month after Chinese New Year). The lovely people from Chinese Chess and Calligraphy Society (CCC) brought us a lively in-person experience of Chinese 5000-year-old culture. Shirui, the leader from the CCC society told us the traditions of Chinese New Year and history about the Calligraphy. Tianyin dressed in beauty “qi-pao” (Chinese dress) was our Calligraphy tutor and showed us the amusement animations of Chinese Calligraphy and characters from YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imxXfC0Isk0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emXw0pgrrlY
Then we guessed the Chinese pictography characters. Finally, everyone had the chance to get the brush and learned how to hold the brush to write. Tianyin demonstrated clearly and carefully to the whole group. We could not wait to these new skills; however, we had to split into to 2 groups to take turns. We started from the easy character of “OX” (since this year is the year of ox) to the more difficult one of “LOVE”. While the first group of students were struggling with their brushes on the paper, other students were either playing the Chinese chess with Master Shao or following Lucy to attempt some paper cutting. Some of them made beautiful butterflies while Peter made a Halloween evil butterfly! Tina made a BISC logo for us. Some brilliant girls made the pattern of “double happiness”, which is typical sign usually used in wedding ceremony. Chinese Chess is something really beyond Xiaomei. Apparently, it seemed that there was a good game between the sophisticated participants playing Chinese Chess, because it took them a long long time for them to finish.
Xiaomei thought the evening gave us a good taste of Chinese cultural through the experiences of hands-on activities
