In celebration of the Year of the Pig, we are featuring a series of blogposts on our website to highlight the Chinese New Year celebrations of Confucius Classroom and Mandarin Excellence Programme (MEP) schools. For the fifth post in the series, we the CNY celebrations of Millfield School and Calday Grange Grammar School.
Millfield School
Millfield School is one of our new Confucius Classrooms and to celebrate Chinese New Year, they took 48 of their students to London to visit the British Museum and Chinatown. Lower 6 pupil Jasmine Hallworth told us about the day…
To celebrate the Year of the Pig, myself and 47 of the Chinese pupils studying Chinese in year 9, year 10 and year 12 had the opportunity to go to China town in London. As this trip overlapped the week of Chinese new year, we were able to experience an culturally enriching and authentic feel of Chinese culture. We spent time in the British Museum, looking at the different historic Asian exhibitions. Finally, we arrived at Chinatown and ate at Imperial China. All of us were able to enjoy authentic Chinese dishes such as sweet and sour pork, fried rice, dumplings and steamed vegetables. After, we had an hour of free time to explore Chinatown and tastes different Chinese snacks. This was an extremely enjoyable experience, one that I was able to learn a lot from.
Calday Grange Grammar School
Year 7 students from 
Calday Grange Grammar School attended the Year of Pig Challenge set by the Museum of Liverpool where they enjoyed the fun of origami while learning Chinese zodiac. Their works will be used by artists to create a giant Pigsy, which will be on display in the Museum of Liverpool.
On 8th February, Year 7 and Year 8 students enjoyed an performance by China Spirit. The performance started with Chinese traditional lion dance followed by martial arts. Students were then taught to do the lion dance and some basic martial art.
The Chinese character “fu” (福) means good fortune and happiness, and during Spring Festival every family would paste it upside down on the doors, in the hope that the word could bring blessings to their families. On 4th Feb, students in the Chinese calligraphy workshop learnt how to write ‘Fu’ using a Chinese brush.
Students from Year 10 and Year 11 had cooking lessons on traditional Chinese food. During the lessons, students learnt how to make Spring Rows and Egg and Tomato Stir-fry. Some students also brought what they made home to share with families. On 8th February, A-level pupils had a Chinese buffet dinner at Taiban Buffet to celebrate the Chinese New Year, while having delicious Chinese food.
We would like to thank Millfield School and Calday Grange Grammar School for sharing their events with us.
Previous posts in the CNY series include
Oundle School/Sir Roger Manwood’s School.
