Joyful celebrations held for Chinese Lunar New Year at The Open University

Happy New Year!

The coming Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on 29 January 2025, is ‘the Year of the Snake’ (蛇年 shé nián). To celebrate, on Tuesday 28^th January, the Online Confucius Institute at The Open University hosted their annual Chinese Lunar New Year Celebrations for OU staff and postgraduate students. Building on the success of the previous 2 years, staff were invited to join in the festive and fun celebrations. This year, attendees were able to participate in traditional Chinese ink painting with professional  Peter Cavaciuti; and water colour painting with the Chinese teacher DING Yufan, try their hand at ink calligraphy, unwind with some Tai Chi/Qigong classes by expert instructor YU Feixia  and relax to live Chinese flute performances by well-known musician GUO Yue. We also had a range of traditional Chinese snacks, hot spring rolls and refreshments for all to enjoy.  

The event was well attended with over 200 staff and postgrads from all across the university enjoying the vibrant and warm celebrations. One attendee, Xavière Hassan, commented that it was ‘an amazing experience to try first hand traditional Chinese water colour and ink calligraphy (and it was very difficult!) but a really enriching afternoon’.

We were delighted to welcome Executive Dean for the Faculty of  Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies, Professor Klaus-Dieter Rossade as well as the Head of School for Languages and Applied Linguistics, Dr Laura Paterson. Professor Rossade opened up the event with a welcome speech extending his gratitude to the visiting artists, musician and Tai Chi expert who travelled from across the country to share their talents and make the event a success. He also expressed OU’s heartfelt thanks to our partner university, Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU), for their amazing support over the last three years. Dr Paterson remarked that ‘the annual Chinese New Year and Spring Festival (chūn jié) event - organised by the Online Confucius Institute in collaboration with our partners at Beijing Foreign Studies University - is a vibrant platform for exploring the beauty and importance of linguistic and cultural diversity. Always a popular event and a lot of fun, this year attendees had a fantastic opportunity to enhance their knowledge of Chinese language and culture, try out some new skills, and celebrate the Year of the Snake’. Dr KAN Qian, UK Director of the Online Confucius Institute, would also like to take this opportunity to ‘warmly welcome our new Chinese Director, Professor XU Xin, who has just arrived in the UK, perfectly timed to lend his capable hands to our celebration’.   

To view photos from the day, please visit the Chinese New Year 2025 padlet where a collection of photographs from the day have been uploaded by attendees. Similar to previous years, attendees are able to upload their photographs of their painting and ink calligraphy creations to the competition padlet to win a prize (winners will be decided on 7^th Feb). You can see the entries for the competition here.

If you’d like to read more about the Chinese Year of the Snake, Dr KAN has written an article for OpenLearn explaining the connotation behind the snake and teaching some traditional festive greetings.

Happy New Year of the Snake! 蛇年快乐 (shé nián kuài lè)

Update 11/02/2025: We have so many excellent entries for the competition that two winners for each category have been chosen. For calligraphy: 1st place: Vivian Framvig; 2nd place: Tom Parish. For painting, 1st place: Xavière Hassan; 2nd place: Helen Panayi. Please email online-ci@open.ac.uk to claim your prize!