Celebrate Chinese New Year at the Urbana Free Library

     If you were in Taiwan, Mainland China, or Hong Kong right now, you would see every family busily preparing for the New Year celebration: cleaning, posting door scrolls, shopping for new clothes, preparing New Year’s food. Here, though not able to personally enjoy all the festivities, overseas Chinese can still enjoy the excitement through contact with family, friends and the media. Our foreign friends and neighbors have probably also sensed our enthusiasm for Chinese New Year, our most important holiday.

    Traditionally, Chinese New Year celebrations include family reunions, neighbors’ greetings, and nationwide celebrations. Over the years, more and more Chinese have gone aboard to study, work or immigrate. For many different reasons, millions of Chinese have to stay abroad during Chinese New Year, and celebrations of Chinese New Year organized by local overseas Chinese groups has become an annual phenomenon all over the world.

    The Urbana Free Library Children’s Department has been offering a special family program to celebrate Chinese New Year for the past few years. We invite you to join in as we do it again this year. Through this public program, we not only try to introduce a part of Chinese culture to the local community and offer some consolation for the homesickness experienced by overseas Chinese, but we also offer an opportunity for mutual understanding and bonding within the community.

     Whether your last year was wonderful or full of hardship, even without firecrackers we can still scare off the old year beast “年”, and boldly take on the challenges of next year by celebrating among friends! New hope comes with the New Year, so come join us to mark a new beginning!

     We have prepared a series of activities to celebrate the Chinese New Year –

1. Jan. 3 – Feb. 28, First floor display case: Chinese arts and crafts and new additions of Chinese and Chinese/English bilingual language children’s e-materials. (Thanks to generous donation and support from our local Chinese group CACCI members Mr. Yu Wang and Ms. Ya Xin Chen)

2. Jan. 29, Saturday, 2 – 2:45 p.m. Children’s Department; Chinese/English Bilingual Storytime (Provided by Asian American Cultural Center, University of Illinois)

3. Feb. 5, Saturday, 1 – 2 p.m., UFL Auditorium; Chinese New Year Celebration program. (Lion Dance, Chinese Yo-Yo, Taichi fan and other Chinese performing arts.)

4. Feb. 9, Wednesday, 6:30 – 7:15 p.m., UFL Auditorium; The Prairie Breezes Family Concerts featuring Chinese instrumental music.

If you have any questions, please call the Children’s Department at 367-4069. Chinese help is also available.

 

Shih-Mei C.