Culture Week of Riga Culture Secondary School

A picture that students were busy with Chinese paper-cutting appeared in the classroom decorated with Chinese elements. Beautiful window paper cuts and lovely pandas came into our eyes gradually: it’s the Chinese class during Culture Week of Riga Culture Secondary School (RCSS).
RCSS has been offering Chinese teaching since 2002. With the support of Confucius Institute at Latvia University, the Confucius Class was put into practice in February 2014. Culture Week is a tradition of RCSS, which is a key to open the door for students to learn about foreign culture and to inspire the passion to learn the language, as well to make the class more interesting and multiple.
The week from 20th to 24th October, 2014 is the Culture Week this semester.
The first lesson is Chinese movie watching: Guasha and The Wedding Banquet. The teacher asked some questions about the movie and Chinese culture before watching, which leaded students to think about the cultural knowledge behind the movie during the watching. These two movies both are about the difference between the Chinese culture and western culture. The process of movie watching was a journey to feel the Chinese culture. After the movie, the students answered the question positively such as “Is Guasha a physical abuse or a traditional Chinese medical treatment?” and “Why Chinese parents value the issue of procreation?”
The second lesson is Chinese paper-cutting. The teacher introduced the development of Chinese paper cut and then show some examples such as “hongshuangxi ” and some window paper cuts. Within few minutes, many brilliant works of paper-cutting came out among the students.
In one week, more than 60 students from 3 grades, 5 classes experienced a journey of Chinese culture with the Chinese movie and paper cut. The Culture Week is an excellent way to get close to China and to help students to learn Chinese with more interests.