January 28, 2004
Chinese New Year party features food, calligraphy and Kung Fu demonstration
Library honors Chinese culture
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Welcoming the Year of the Monkey, 30 youth celebrated Chinese New Year in style Saturday afternoon at the Traverse Area District Library.
They feasted on rice, spring rolls and egg drop soup, practiced their hand at Chinese calligraphy and created a dragon's tail, a dragon mask and a lucky New Year's envelope. In addition, storyteller Jill Bert told a folk tale of how the Chinese dragon acquired its horns.
The food was a hit with most attendees. They waited patiently through the story, a Kung Fu demonstration and a cultural presentation while the scents of rice and soup filled the room.
"I didn't know about the yin-yang information," said Allix Geiger, 10, a homeschool student from Kewadin after the presentations. "I love the food."
A few students dressed in black and red clothes, considered lucky colors for the New Year's celebration. All the library staff and volunteers helping at the event coordinated their wardrobes around this theme.
Nan Serocki, a sixth grade student at Eastern Elementary School, sported an authentic Chinese hat, a souvenir of her father's stint in the Peace Corps in Malaysia. She also wore the lucky colors of red and black.
"I learned a lot about how they celebrate the New Year," said Serocki, 11, after the program. "I love the Chinese culture, because of the food, my dad makes it all the time."
The library's Youth Services department created the Chinese New Year's celebration. They began planning it months ago, putting it together with lots of ingenuity and volunteer help. They also coordinated a display of kites for the community meeting room for this month, enhancing the cultural atmosphere.
"We were very happy with the program, it was not a high cost but had a lot of volunteer help and excellent presenters," said Bernadette Groppuso, Youth Services Coordinator for the Traverse Area District Library. "We try not to repeat our programs, it keeps us fresher than doing the same things over and over again. Keeps our creative juices flowing."
Groppuso noted that staff targeted youth over age ten deliberately, creating an exciting event that would lure this age group from their other commitments. The library's Summer Reading Club also serves that age group and has excellent attendance every year, indicating to staff that this age group was interested in special programs.
"We do programming for that age, but it is hard to get them in, they are very scheduled these days," she said. "It is not that they are under served, they are just very busy."
The event began with a demonstration of the Chinese marital art Kung Fu, given by Vicki Parzych of Rapid City. Parzych and her assistant and student, Jason Hughey, 14, showed the basic 20 moves of Kung Fu and then demonstrated a variety of kicks, upper body strikes and blocks.
"Everything you do in Kung Fu, you use one of those 20 body stances," Parzych said. "Kung Fu is a very contact sport."
Dick Fidler of Traverse City has immersed himself in the study of Chinese culture and language for more than three decades. A retired science teacher, Fidler discussed the principles of the yin-yang symbol, a philosophy that says in every light there is some darkness and in every darkness there is some light.
"These ideas from China have kind of gotten planted in American's heads, too," he noted.
Fidler also demonstrated how to cast an oracle for the New Year, a typical ritual among the Chinese.
"Fortune telling is very important to the Chinese," he noted, using a reproduction of a 2,500 year old text to interpret the six coin tosses. "They also might do it whenever there's a crisis in their lives."
After the presentations, students could eat or complete a variety of crafts. At one table, Fidler guided students through the basics of making common Chinese symbols. Showing them how to precisely hold their paintbrush and dip the ink, students were soon making symbols for horse, tree, forest and one-digit numbers.
"You need to know at least 2,000 characters in Chinese to be literate," noted Fidler, on the vastness of the Chinese language. "Proper names are hard."