Students celebrate Lantern Festival with culture workshops

To mark the Lantern Festival, traditional Chinese culture events featuring paper cutting, martial arts, and calligraphy got introduced to local school campus, facilitating young students to have first-hand experience with the Chinese cultural heritage.

At the event called Chinese Festival at the Beijing City International School, traditional Chinese cultural performances and workshops displaying Chinese-style hanfu clothing, tea ceremony, and traditional Chinese medicine technique of acupuncture held Friday were warmly received by the students, both the Chinese nationals and the international ones.

Moreover, a small charity bazaar in the meanwhile was held at the event and some intangible cultural inheritors were invited to demonstrate their artworks or skills to the participants on site, according to Li Jiayi, an 11th grader of the school who planned the festival event.

A big fan of traditional Chinese culture, Li said the event was a good way to celebrate the Lantern Festival and to enable her fellow students to have close contacts with the Chinese cultural heritage.

Mark Sullivan, secondary school principal of the school, said they fully supported the Chinese culture event initiated by the students who are passionate about their roots and culture. "We are very proud of the cultural link to the country that we live in."

Wang Songsong contributed to the story.