It was very lively at The Queen’s Primary School, Chester, England on Saturday morning 14th May. It turned out to be Mandarin Morning sponsored jointly by The Queen’s Senior School and its Lower School. Parents and pupils around Chester were invited to attend this event. There were altogether 43 children signed up for this event, and 42 actually attended.

The was very beautiful and decorated by all sorts of Chinese elements. On the reception table just inside of the main entrance, there was a red material with golden characters on it, reading Lan Ting Ji Xu. Pretty red lanterns were hanging on the roof of the corridor. Chinese traditional music The Butterfly Lovers were repeatedly played along the way to the hall. Outside of the hall, the teachers gave each student an elegant name tag with her English name, Chinese name and Pinyin on it, also with a lovely dragon and the letter Q which represents The Queen’s School. The magnificent 20-meter Flying Dragon (named Xiang Long in Mandarin) was lying along the wall in the hall, with its golden scales shining on its red skin. There were brochures and Chinese zodiac bookmarks on the table inside the door of the hall.

At 9:30 am, Mrs. Taylor welcomed everyone, introduced the sessions of Mandarin Morning and wished the girls would enjoy this event. Later, Mrs. Ketchell briefly introduced China to the audience, including the comparison of the size of China to UK, population, geography, Chinese characters, paper cutting, paper folding, flower making, dragon dance, lion dance, fan dance, lucky colour red, Chinese zodiac and the special meaning of fish in China. When one little girl successfully pointed out where China is on the world map, everyone applauded for her.

The girls were divided into three groups to attend different sessions starting at 10 sharp. Each session was half an hour and there were altogether 4 sessions. Session one was Mandarin the language, in this session, the pupils learnt the greetings, family members and numbers 1 to 5. Session two was craft, the students learnt how to fold a paper fish, a fan and color a Chinese traditional top. Session three was fan dance, the girls learnt a whole set of Tai Chi fan dance within half an hour. Session four was lion dance, likewise, the children learnt how to dance in a lion and how to use gong and drum.

The parents and their children gathered together in the hall again at 12:20 pm. Around 30 girls volunteered to do the fan dance, and the audience couldn’t help but gave a round applause at the end. Five other girls performed the lion dance, which also was very fascinating.

This was a very successful event, because most parents said thank you to the teachers full-heartedly and said that their children did enjoy this event. So far, two parents have signed up for the Mandarin club at The Queen’s Senior School this September since they would love to send their daughter to learn more about the Chinese language and culture.