The Chinese Institute Geneva Foundation (CIG) cheerfully celebrated the Chinese New Year with over 120 guests on 29th January 2017.
The Chinese New Year Gala was held at the Geneva Conference Centre of Buddhism. The celebration started with remarks by Mrs. Jun CHU (Founder and President of the CIG) and Mrs. Zhimin SUN (President of Nyon branch school). They looked back at CIG’s development in the past 9 years, and also looked ahead for CIG’s future.
CIG is a non-profit foundation registered in Swiss Federal Government and Canton of Geneva in 2008. It initiated with two Chinese classes, and developed to the current 20 classes with 180 students and 20 teachers. CIG hosts“Speaking about China, Knowing about China” large-scale theme cultural events every two years. In addition to regular Chinese classes in Geneva and Nyon, CIG also gives lectures on cultural differences between the western countries and China for Swiss enterprises. 2 – 3 summer camps and winter camps are hosted annually. Furthermore,CIG successfully organized two cultural trips to China. All these activities contributed to a comprehensive presentationof China, and a better understanding of China for more and more children and their parents.
CIG rented the assembly hall of the Geneva Conference Centre of Buddhism to host the Chinese New Year Gala. Questions were posed about why CIG chose a Buddha temple. As the Founder of CIG, President CHU listed her reasoning: on the one hand, as a tradition in China, during Spring Festival people usually go to the temples to burnfirst incense, as a means to worship the gods and pray for blessings. The tradition of burning first incense has a long history, found popular already in the Song Dynasty. Todayall the guests to the Geneva Conference Centre of Buddhism, no matter of their religions and believes, are blessed and protected by the Buddha. All the participants are our distinguished guests. On the other hand, CIG is preparing new classes at the Geneva Conference Centre of Buddhism and open a new campus in Lausanne. This is also why we chose to host the celebration here. Western churches can be venues for concerts, similarly eastern Buddha temples can of course be a choice for Chinese New Year celebrations.
The CIG Chinese New Year Gala was strongly supported and blessed by the Geneva Conference Centre of Buddhism. The Centre also sponsored with colored glaze necklace, cinnabar red necklace, tridacna necklace, the Czech crystal necklace, candle holders, “magnate” twin jade pendant etc. All are collector’s editions with certificates, which were big surprises for the guests who won the gifts.
Accompanied by relaxing Chinese music, our guests arrived in the main hall decorated with red lanterns symbolizing peace. Following the introduction of Mrs. Qijin LIU (the host of the event), the whole performance began with two Chinese New Year songs (“Gong Xi Gong Xi恭喜恭喜” and “Xin Nian Hao新年好”) by CIG students. Next were “Mu Lan Fan (木兰扇) ” and lion dance by the Lion Dance Team from Lausanne, which brought the celebration to a climax. Other performances included Chen Tai Chi (24 movements), Tai Chi fan, Chinese Zheng (Gu Zheng), modern Chinese dance by the Geneva Youth Dance Group, cucurbit flute (Hu Lu Si, a free reed wind instrument from China) by CIG students, reading of ancient Chinese prose, as well as Chinese songs volunteered by our guests. All the performers, professional or amateur, were enthusiastic and devoted, and won warm applause form the audience. Our guests also enjoyed the dedicated vegetarian dishes prepared by the Vietnamese chefs. Afterwards 4 booths were prepared with dumplings DIY, pancakes, Chinese traditional paper-cutting and rings game. We sent each child a souvenir in reward for his/her effort to participate in all 4 booths, which was great fun for the kids. Meanwhile a Q&A session about Chinese culture was designed for our guests. Adorable mascots for the year of the Rooster were awarded as a prize for the right answers. Another highlight was the draw for the raffle. The raffle tickets entitled our guests to 66 prizes from CIG and another 6 from the Geneva Conference Centre of Buddhism. Special souvenirs were also planned for those who did not win any prize. Meanwhile we felt gratitude to our sponsor Gubelin for a valuable pen from Mont Blanc worthy of CHF500. Through recommendations and evaluations by our teachers, we granted this valuable prize to Samantha (a student from our Nyon branch school). She is a typical third-generation Chinese. Her grandparents are the first-generation Chinese in Cambodia, who immigrated, some time after, to Switzerland during the war. Samantha’s parents are second-generation Chinese born in Switzerland but could hardly speak Chinese. The whole family strongly supports their third-generations to learn Chinese. All 4 grandchildren are our students at CIG.
Nicolas Slingerland, a student from Nyon, joined the Gala with all his family members (grandparents, parents, brother and sister), as well as a Chinese colleague of his father. His grandfather extended sincere thanks to us by departure, emphasizing that this was the best, coziest Chinese New Year celebration he ever participated in. The whole event came to a successful conclusion in a congenial atmosphere, while everyone was still reluctant to say goodbye.
A new year started in our mutual greetings. May us good luck and happiness in the Year of the Rooster. Master HsingYun highlights that the true “first incense” lies in our heart and in our faith. Burning incense is a way of communication among people, Gods and Buddha. A tiny petal of incense in our heart can be spread all over theplace. Let us lighten up our own incense in the heart and become our own guardian angels.