Chinese New Year Celebration 2019

The Confucius Classroom at MGC has organized the 2019 Chinese New Year Celebration on Friday the 15th of February. Around 186 students from Years 8-12 who are currently studying Chinese participated in the celebration at the Auditorium.

At the beginning of the celebration, Assistant Principal Ms. Sefija Demirova made a short but sharp speech to start the assembly. Tian Qingfang, Consul of Education from the Consulate-General of PRC in Melbourne made a speech as well. She also brought in heaps of Chinese delicacies for our students. The girls loved them!

Clarissa Belanti from the Confucius Institute at the University of Melbourne made an inspiring speech on her experience of learning Chinese, the many opportunities it created for her including interpreting for Kevin Rudd when he visited China as prime minister and singing with China’s iconic figure in music Li Guyi (China’s Barbra Streisand) on the national television.

Year 12 student Matilda Smithers delivered a speech in Chinese effortlessly retelling how she started learning Chinese and how she won the 2018 Global Village Youth Bilingual Speaking Competition Australia (Category Secondary  Years 11-12). Matilda will go to Beijing in March to participate in the Global Village Youth Bilingual Speaking Competition World Final.

In between the speeches, our international students Luyao (Eva) Chen & Jiawen (Amy) Deng as well as our wonderful Hanban-sponsored teacher (Chinese assistant) Xiaodi (Cindy) Huang played the traditional musical instrument Chinese lute and performed a traditional Chinese dance. In addition, Kaixuan (Isabella) Cao from St. Catherine’s School played a classical piece on Chinese zither. Her performance was amazing! Our girls enjoyed the presentations, performances and delicious Chinese food such as dumplings, spring rolls and pumpkin cakes. The food was provided by the Consulate General of PRC in Melbourne and Consul Tian personally sourced the supplier. A huge THANK YOU from all of us!