This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Exeter chapter.
The 19th of February 2015, welcomes in the year of the Goat and the 4712th Chinese year. It is the most important festival in the Chinese calendar when people return to their hometowns to join their families in celebration. And this is by no means comparable to your NYE experience at a friend’s house party, popping Prosecco and waiting for Big Ben to sound the twelve chimes on the TV.
Traditionally, Chinese New Year celebrations provide a 15 day holiday full of fireworks and ends with the Lantern Festival, (which, yes, is the scene from Tangled in real life!). Parades are held in cities, featuring the beautiful dragon and lion dance and children are given red envelopes with
Apart from the fact that Chinese New Year is totally magical and colourful, this year has added personal significance as I have a deeper understanding of Chinese culture. I have always seen the summer holidays as a chance to break away, find new things and make memories that keep you going when the rigmarole of the library sets back in. So, in line with this, I did something that I never thought that I would get the chance to do and I went to Beijing for a month. I volunteered as an English teacher in one of China’s top universities called Tsinghua along with a number of other students, not only from Exeter and the UK, but also from Canada, Australia and the USA.
It’s such a cliché but I really did have the time of my life and I am sure that anyone else who went on the trip would tell you the same. As a volunteer teacher I had two classes of just fewer than 30 students to mentor and help them improve their confidence in speaking English during a three-week summer camp. It was fascinating not only to discover how little the students knew about the UK – only a couple of them knew about One Direction and they laughed when I showed them a Yorkshire Pudding – but also to really get a sense of what it’s like to live in China.
Whilst in Beijing, I visited amazing historical and cultural places, including The Great Wall which was breathtaking. I do not agree with Karl Pilkington that it is not really that ‘great’ a wall. We went on such a clear day, a rarity in Northern China, so the views were spectacular. It was swelteringly hot but well worth the climb.
Eating actual Chinese food was quite a shock – not nearly enough crispy duck pancakes – and it does not taste like your normal order from the Chinese on Sidwell Street. Mealtimes were more of a point-and-hope-for-the-best Exeter’s short programme scheme and generous funding is available, so I would encourage anyone and everyone who wants to do something a little bit different to apply.
Photo Credits:
www.dragonhorse.ca
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