Thanks to West Seattle High School Mandarin teacher Su-Chun King for sharing her students’ report and photos from the school’s Lunar New Year celebration earlier this month. The report is by Greta Guess, the photos by Brielle Martin:

On February 2nd, West Seattle High School students celebrated the Chinese Lunar New Year, the year of the rooster. The Chinese language program hosted the activity. They did this by setting up different booths in the cafeteria based on how people in the Chinese language world celebrate the traditional New Year. Many booths were open for the students to participate in! For example, there were games, such as the chopstick contest. Students could see how many M&Ms they could take out of a bag and put into a bowl in a certain amount of time.

There were also plenty of other activities, like doing spring festival couplets, Lunar New Year painting, making bookmarks, paper sky lanterns, Chinese chess, Chinese spinning tops game, traditional Chinese wedding costume show, Chinese god of wealth visiting, and even tea tasting in traditional Chinese tea ceremonies. On top of that, there was a variety of traditional Chinese foods to be served. These included egg rolls, chow mein, edamame, dumplings, sticky rice cakes, Chinese New Year candies/fortune cookies, and more.

There was even a lion dance performed, entirely by the students, which is a big part of a traditional Chinese New Year’s celebration.

Big thanks to the CIWA (Confucius Institute of the state of Washington) for sponsoring the food cost.