On Wednesday February 18^th, the day of Chinese New Year Eve 2015 the Unquowa School bid farewell to the Year of the Horse and welcomed the Year of the Goat with a holiday celebration performance staged by the Lower School and a Chinese New Year Eve feast made from scratch by Chef David and team. The program began with a handful of third and fourth grade students presenting eloquently, in their own words, what is Chinese New Year Eve and how it is celebrated. Next, the Lower School enacted a popular folktale about the Nian Beast to explain why the Chinese eat dumplings, wear red clothes, hang red papers and light firecrackers on Chinese New Year Eve. Four fourth graders narrated the story in English while the rest of the Lower School acted out the story in Mandarin Chinese! Finally, the performance ended on a high note when the entire Lower School, including our little PreK-3 and PreK-4 students sang a song to wish everyone a happy new year.

The celebration continued on at lunch when the students enjoyed a traditional Chinese New Year Eve meal filled with symbolic food such as long noodle soup for longevity, whole fish (with heads and tails on!) for abundance, pork and vegetarian dumplings for prosperity, Chinese Broccoli for longevity and clementine for gold. In addition, the students devoured roasted chicken, which is considered to be a special treat to have for the New Year celebration. Lunch adjourned on a loud note when the students gathered outside to throw party snaps on the ground (instead of lighting firecrackers) to scare away the Nian Beast and other evil spirits!

We wish everyone a very happy, healthy and prosperous Year of the Goat!