By Keira Chen (III)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On February 16, the annual Lunar New Year assembly was held as a combination of pre-recorded and in-person performances in Hauser. Most students watched from their advisories, enjoying the various performances and more, as the event strived to provide an experience \u201cjust as good as in previous years.\u201d Typically, the Lunar New Year celebration includes multiple performances by students and guests alike, such as the Dragon Dance performed by Middle School Chinese classes. There are also festivities after the assembly, such as a buffet of Asian food brought by students, games, and presentations having to do with the holiday. However, due to the pandemic\u2019s restrictions, Pingry had to get creative with this year\u2019s assembly. Recorded performances by many students were edited together into a video, with the entire assembly hosted by Milenka Men (IV) and Charles Jiang (IV).
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The event started out with the Taiko Drumming Club performing Matsura<\/em>, a traditional Japanese piece, in Hauser Auditorium. Then, students from both the Middle and Upper School made their appearances in the assembly video as they sang, danced, and more. The Plum Blossoms <\/em>was sung by Vinav Shah (II), and The First Day of Lunar New Year<\/em> was recited by Jasmine Zhou (Grade 6) with Ava Maloney (Grade 6). Ram Doraswamy (V) and Natalie DeVito (V) sang a contemporary song by Teresa Teng called \u201cTian Mi Mi\u201d (\u201cSweet on You\u201d) together. Zoe Wang (V) and her mother performed a cello and piano duet for the popular Chinese folk song \u201cMo Li Hua\u201d (\u201cJasmine Flower\u201d), which was followed by clips of students singing, dancing, and playing instruments to the viral song \u201cXue Hua Piao Piao.\u201d A guest performer, Gao Hong, was invited to the assembly and played a song called \u201cDragon Boat\u201d on the pipa, a traditional Chinese stringed instrument. The assembly closed out with various faculty, staff, and students saying \u201cHappy New Year\u201d in multiple languages. The assembly was successful because of the hard work World Languages Faculty Member Weiwei Yu put in, as well as most of the Chinese teachers. Students from the Taiko Drumming Club, East Asian Affinity Group, and Chinese classes also helped bring the assembly to fruition. Franklin Zhu (V) said that \u201c[his] role was to approach students, faculty, and administration to have them try to say a celebratory phrase in Mandarin.\u201d When asked about the assembly\u2019s importance, Zhu explained that the assembly \u201cprovide[d] Asian Americans a platform to celebrate their culture, [which] allows us to be seen at Pingry.\u201d The students\u2019 impression of the Lunar New Year assembly was generally positive. \u201cI thoroughly enjoyed watching all of the different expressions of art in the assembly,\u201d Sarah Gu (III) said, \u201cand I really appreciate all the hard work that went into its creation.\u201d According to Zhu, \u201cthe fact that many people…showed enthusiasm was very heart-warming.\u201d In the midst of the ongoing pandemic and the recent rise in AAPI hate crimes, it\u2019s more important than ever to gather together and celebrate as a community, even if not all of us could be together in person. Despite the constraints, Pingry found a way to honor cultural traditions and create an assembly everyone could enjoy. Happy Year of the Ox!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Taiko Drumming Club performing Matsura<\/em> By Keira Chen (III) On February 16, the annual Lunar New Year assembly was held as a combination of pre-recorded and in-person performances in Hauser. Most students watched from their advisories, enjoying the various performances and more, as the event strived to provide an experience \u201cjust as good as in previous years.\u201d Typically, the Lunar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":4253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"1080","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,200],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-school-news","category-breaking-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4254,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4249\/revisions\/4254"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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