A Chinese festival reunited in Cluj representatives of the arts, culture and sports.The Chinese Spring Festival offered a celebration in true Chinese style with dance, songs, instrumental music, martial arts, acrobats and opera music. The members of the Confucius Institute, the Avram Iancu Folk Ensemble, Sigismund Toduță Music High School and the Ming Dao Sports Club also took part in the celebration with various representations.
The Confucius Institute, part of the Babeș-Bolyai University (UBB) invited the public from Cluj to the celebration of the Spring Festival which marks the beginning of the New Year. Those present enjoyed a show full of colour, energy and sound. Asian culture fans were impressed by traditional dance performances and culinary acrobatics combined with surprises for the public. Good luck souvenirs were offered to the audience and those present also had the chance to try plate spinning on their fingers. On the sounds of traditional music, 5 members of the Confucius Institute offered calligraphy, decoupage and Chinese painting demonstrations. Ming Dao Sports Club (The Light Way) offered demonstrations of various Kung Fu styles originating from Northern and Southern China.
The Avram Iancu Folk Ensemble charmed the Chinese guests with their traditional dances and the Festival ended with an opera duet for the delight of the audience.
The Festival marks the beginning of 2011, the year of the rabbit. Legend has it that at the beginning of the Chinese New Year a hungry mythical beast called the Nian would devour crops and kidnap every being that came his way. To protect themselves villagers would put food in front of their doors and shortly after they noticed that the beast was afraid of people wearing red clothes. Hence, even to this day, the tradition of hanging red lanterns and red scrolls on windows and doors. The lion or the dragon dance combined with deafening drumming symbolize the chasing away of evil.
