How Lunar New Year is celebrated at Kazan University
Chinese students speak about their customary actions on this day.
“New Year is our favorite holiday,” says Wang Yucong, 2nd year postgraduate student of Russian language. “It has a history of over 4,000 years. This time, the official holidays in China are from 31 January to 6 February. The celebrations will end with the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the year.”
Since New Year is a family holiday, generations always come together to celebrate and exchange presents, with the famous “red envelopes” being the main element of such exchange. Of course, these days the envelopes are often sent through WeChat, China’s ubiquitous messenger and social media hub.
Another indispensable part of the holiday is the color red, which is omnipresent in house decorations and attires. The color symbolizes fire, good luck, and festivity. It’s also customary to greet a new year in new clothes.
“For the feast, we have to prepare national dishes. Ingredients and condiments are bought at a Chinese shop here in Kazan,” shares student Zheng Jima. “It’s usual to prepare your own dumplings, but we bought pre-cooked ones and fried a fish. If we make dumplings at home, we put a coin into one of them. The one to get a coin should be the luckiest in the coming year.”
Zheng Jima always wanted to learn foreign languages, and he heard from his friends that Russian was a really challenging one, which stimulated him to choose it, “Russian language has complex pronunciation and grammar and is very different from Chinese or Korean. When you are just starting at the university, you have to make yourself study and keep up with the others.”
At this moment, there are 1,477 Chinese nationals in all levels of programs at KFU.
Source text and photo: Alina Minnevalieva
Translation: Yury Nurmeev