! ! ! HAPPY NEW YEAR ! ! !

2007 is the Year of the Pig and if you weren’t at the Birmingham Museum of Art this weekend to celebrate BMA’s first annual Chinese New Year Celebration you REALLY missed out! The event kicked off with a Lion Dance and parade while the staccato pop of firecrackers peppered the air. Some of the fireworks exploded in the sky, releasing colorful ribbons which soon festooned many of the trees in Linn Park. There were food vendors, many types of textile and decorative crafts for sale, and representatives from several Chinese and Chinese-American associations including the Birmingham Chinese Association, the Chinese-American Business Association of Birmingham, the Chinese Student and Scholar Association, and the Birmingham Chapter of the U.S. China Peoples Friendship Association. Traditional music was playing, kids were darting to and fro, and it was truly a wonderfully chaotic celebration!

From Linn Park participants could make their way into the Museum to enjoy hot tea and fortune cookies while listening to a choir of children sing traditional Chinese songs. There was a scavenger hunt in the Chinese art gallery, face painting (I was born in a year of the snake so that’s what I got!), and a calligraphy table where you could have your name written in Chinese. If you still had the energy, you could have enjoyed a fashion show of traditional Chinese garb while you relaxed at the Terrace Café with your tea. It was a great event so mark your calendars for next year’s celebration for the Year of the Rat.

For more information about China be sure to check out our collection at Emmet O’Neal! We have a comprehensive collection on China and many facets of its culture including history, language, myths, economics, commerce, furniture and more! Want to learn to speak Mandarin? Spanish? Farsi? Choose from these or any other of the over 25 languages available from the Rosetta Stone Language Lab!

Rosetta Stone is the #1 language-learning software in the world, used successfully by millions of people in 150 countries. It’s been adopted by government agencies and corporations—including Deutsche Telekom, IBM, and Lockheed Martin—and thousands of schools and universities around the world. With Rosetta Stone, learning a new language is easier than you ever imagined (description taken from http://www.rosettastone.com/).

Holley