Chinese New Year – the Year of the Fire Monkey

Kleve/Kamp-Lintfort, 28 January 2015: On 7 January 2016, the New Year was marked with a celebration to commemorate the Chinese New Year. Students at Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences celebrated their New Year with traditional food, games, music and other surprises. Alongside the Vice-President for Research and Knowledge Transfer, Prof. Dr. habil. Jens Gebauer, the students were also able to welcome the Chinese Consul, Dongsheng Han, from Düsseldorf.

The celebration was organised by Daren Liu and Yaou Wu from the ‘Chinese Students’ Union’, together with students from the ‘International Business and Social Sciences’ and ‘Sustainable Agriculture’ degree programmes. The Chinese New Year begins with the new moon of the first month of the new year and ends with the Lantern Festival on the 15th day. The festival follows China’s traditional lunar calendar and falls annually between 20 January and 21 February. As the Chinese New Year coincides exactly with the exam period this year, the Chinese students celebrated the New Year a little early.

Chinese New Year is one of China’s most important festivals. Before the start of the new year, people leave their homes before midnight, taking the traces of the old year with them outside, but then return to open the windows and thus let in the good fortune of the new year.