Chinese New Year of the rabbit celebrations at the Open University

兔年快乐！tǔ nián kuài lè! Happy Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rabbit! 

According to the Chinese zodiac, 2023 is the Year of the Rabbit, starting from January 22nd, 2023 (Chinese New Year's Day according to Chinese lunar calendar), and ending on February 9th, 2024. The sign of the rabbit is a symbol of longevity, mercy, elegance, peace, and prosperity in Chinese culture. 

To celebrate Chinese New Year, the OU Online Confucius Institute held a celebration on campus with live Guqin music, spring roll making, writing the Chinese character for ‘happiness’ in brush and ink and Chinese tea with snacks.  We were delighted that over 150 people attended the celebrations and you can see a selection of photos from the day are here. 

For those who weren’t able to join us on the day, demonstration videos of the  activities will soon be available on this page and you can see an animation how to write the character for happiness here. We invite you to submit your own calligraphy entries on this padlet before the end of January when we’ll pick a winner. You can also take a look at some of the great entries already submitted. Instructions how to write the character for ‘happiness’ are here which also includes the story about why this character is frequently used at New Year.

Further information about Guqin music and the three pieces played on the day is available here as well as instructions how to make your own spring rolls!

This is a clip demonstrating how to make spring rolls, filmed during the celebration event. 

Special thanks to SHI Yang, founder of Cambridge Guqin Society, for performing three beautiful pieces of Guqin music; and our thanks go to HE Yan, teacher from South Bank University’s Confucius Institute, for her calligraphy demonstration and supervise the workshop.

A new article about Chinese New Year of the Rabbit is now available on OpenLearn including key phrases with audio files to use in Mandarin Chinese for the New Year.

You can see highlights from the day in the video below.