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. One of our MEP schools, St Catherine’s College, is kicking off the series by sharing photos and videos from their recent Chinese New Year event.

St. Catherine’s College Head of Languages and Mandarin teacher, Newton Leng tells us about the event…

To celebrate the success of Mandarin in curriculum at St. Catherine’s, as well as the Year of the Pig, the school held a Chinese New Year Extravaganza. We were very lucky to have the Goldsmith’s dance team showcasing their amazing Chinese performing arts. From the cheerful spirit of the Lion Dance and Kungfu dances to the pupils’ chorus and fan dances, the show was a colourful display of Chinese cultural tradition.

The celebrations provided the perfect variety of entertaining acts for the audience, which was made up of more than 200 people who are interested in Mandarin Chinese. We were also very lucky to have Kay McLeod, the IOE Confucius Institute MEP Coordinator and Lei Xu, the Chinese Director of Goldsmiths University Confucius Institute joining us, along with our governors and SLT throughout the evening.  Our Year 7 MEP students provided the peak of the evening’s entertainment with their stunning fan dance! Our Hanban teacher Xialan Han led a spectacular chorus from neighbouring Ratton School, featuring pupils from their Mandarin club.

Highlights from the show

St. Catherine’s Fan Dance

Ratton School Choir

We would like to thank St. Catherine’s College for sharing their event with us.

Keep your eyes posted for the next Chinese New Year blogpost!