Small, ridged dumplings packed with a rich, ground pork filling – they were designed to resemble the silver and gold ingots of ancient China. And because they symbolized prosperity, they were traditionally consumed for good luck by Chinese families at their annual Spring Festival, an event formerly known as the Chinese New Year and celebrated today throughout China.
Their creation was part of the Mandarin students’ appreciation of Chinese culture last week at New Prairie Middle School. “I want to go to China so bad,” said eighth grader Caitlyn Young after sampling one of the traditional Chinese eats in class.
Mandarin Teacher May Tang, who’s been teaching some of the Mandarin courses in the district, said this is the most popular holiday in China, and is comparable in importance to Christmas in America. “It’s the turning point,” she said. “You wrap up the old year and welcome the new one. It’s also the time of family reunions. A lot of family members are busy and work in different cities, but for Spring Festival they all try to come back home.”
She said the name of the celebration was changed to the Spring Festival in the early 20th Century after China adopted the Gregorian Calendar in place of the lunar one it previously used. The festival’s held on the date of the traditional Chinese New Year. All last week she took students through a series of traditional Chinese projects as part of the cultural aspect of the Mandarin course.
This included the construction of window paper-cuts, dumplings, symbolic Hongbao (gift money wrapped in red envelopes) and even a symbolic cleaning of the classroom “I remember when I was little,” she said, “like a week before Spring Festival, my mother and the whole family would clean the house, dust, clean everything thoroughly, so the home is ready for the new year. Then you start purchasing all the food and the decorations, like the Chinese red lanterns and window paper cuts, and we’ll also buy and make new clothes. Everything has to be new for the coming year for a new start.”
New Prairie’s Mandarin program – which began last year with Intro to Mandarin and Mandarin 1 in the middle school, and since expanded to programs in the high school and elementary – offers New Prairie children a chance to learn the language and culture of China.
Eighth grader Hunter Dunivon said he’s become fascinated by the culture and plans to visit the country this summer with his mother. “I think it will be a great experience just to see the way they do things,” he said.
Dunivon said he took the course because he thought knowing Chinese would be beneficial if he pursued a career in law. “I really like it and I plan on continuing it,” he said. “I want to be a lawyer when I’m older. So if you speak it (Mandarin), it really helps out in communicating with other people.”
He said he went to a Chinese restaurant once with his family and was able to converse with the waiter in Mandarin. He was told his pronunciation wasn’t the best, but it was definitely intelligable. This encouraged him to go.
This is Tang’s first year teaching middle school Mandarin in the U.S. Before this, she taught Mandarin to international students at the University of Electronic Science and Technology in China, which catered to people from Africa and South Asia. She said there was some difficulty in transitioning to the American style of teaching, although she was given a lot of help by her fellow teachers.
“We do a lot of drills in China,” she said, “but here, I learned gradually, I need to teach the kids through a combination of games and instruction. This is the way that kids learn here. And they don’t do a lot of homework after school compared to Chinese students. So I’ll give them some guided work in class so they won’t spend a lot of time after.”
On her first day, she said one of her students thought China was located somewhere in Japan, an island off the continent of Asia. So she’s had to deal with a few misunderstandings about her country.
“But I love the kids in New Prairie,” she said. “They are curious and interested about a different culture. And I’m really moved and inspired by them. One of the students told me yesterday ‘When I go to high school, I’m going to take Mandarin 2 so you’d better be there!’ Now that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard.”
May Tang is one of two Mandarin instructors in the district. Wei Han began the program last year in New Prairie. Now the corporation plans to expand its Mandarin program with a Mandarin 3 course offering next year.