Bilingual poetry Readings of Mid-autumn Festival in Rezekne University
Local time on September 23, as the traditional Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival is approaching, Rezekne University ，located in Latvia， held a bilingual poetry readings of Mid-Autumn Festival, as the opening for series of activities for anniversaries of Confucius Institute at University of Latvia in 2015.
The lecture contained the introduction of Mid-Autumn Festival, bilingual poetry readings and three activities: hand-making Mid-Autumn Festival lanterns, music appreciation and mooncakes tasting, which attracted a large number of teachers and students from this school.
The lecture started from the introduction of Mid-Autumn Festival, Chinese teacher Liang Mingxuan used several interesting pictures to show the cultural background and customs of Mid-Autumn Festival. Then she said, in the Chinese history, poets uesd to creat their works related to moon to express emotions.Firstly, she read two poems from Tang Dynasty, one is” THE MOON AT THE FORTIFIED PASS “from poet Li Bai, another is ” VIEWING THE MOON, THINKING OF YOU ” from poet Zhang jiuling,then she invited students to read the English translations. She not only explained the meaning of the poems, but also the beauty of rhythm of the poems in Tang Dynasty.
During the activity time, Tr.Liang divided students into different groups to make the Mid-Autumn Festival lanterns by teamwork. She taught students how to use color papers and Chinese knot rope to make a lantern at the beginning, later,she taught everyone how to write “Zhong Qiu Kuai Le”(Happy Mid-Autumn Festival) this four Chinese characters patiently, hoping participants can write them on their lanterns.
After this activity, she explained the famous Song Dynasty poet Su Shi’s work: ” PRELUDE TO WATER MELODY”, and also invited a student to read the English translation version.
After reading it, she played the song with the same name, the participants were all immersed in this beautiful song .
In the end of this lecture, students and teachers were enjoying moon cakes and took pictures together of the occasion. Through this lecture, participants have learned a lot of knowledge about Chinese culture,realizing that Chinese traditional culture is very interesting, they are looking forward to holding more events like this lecture.
