February 1, 2008

Chinese New Year's celebration honors the Year of the Rat

The celebration, which is free and open to the public, is 3-5 p.m. at Stanley Coulter Hall, Room 131. The day of the Chinese New Year is celebrated in January or February based on a lunar calendar, and the year also is marked by one of 12 animals. This year celebrates the rat.

"People born in the Year of Rat are smart and bright, sociable and family-minded," says Wei Hong, an associate professor of Chinese and director of the institute. "In Chinese, the rat is respected and considered as a courageous and enterprising person."

Refreshments, including traditional Chinese foods such as jiaozi (dumplings) and niangao (rice cake), will be served. Participants also can win prizes for quizzes on New Year rituals.

The Confucius Institute at Purdue is a collaboration among the colleges of Liberal Arts, Engineering and the Krannert School of Management, as well as Shanghai Jiaotong University in Shanghai, China. One-hundred forty Confucius institutes worldwide are sponsored by the Chinese Language Council International to develop relationships and understanding between countries.

The Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures is housed in the College of Liberal Arts.

Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, (765) 494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu

Source: Wei Hong, (765) 494-3859, hongwei@purdue.edu 

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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