Alberta Hope Chinese School holds a gala dinner to welcome the Spring Festival of the Year of the Dragon (photo)

Alberta Hope Chinese School holds a gala dinner to welcome the Year of the Dragon (photo) The annual Chinese New Year is coming. Hope Chinese School will open in January 2012...

The annual Chinese New Year is coming. Hope Chinese School held a grand dinner to celebrate the Spring Festival of the Year of the Dragon at Fengcheng Restaurant from 6pm to 9:30pm on January 20, 2012. In three and a half hours, more than 200 school committee and board members, teachers, parents, and school children gathered together to spend a joyful, peaceful, festive and lively night. On this evening, these overseas travelers and their children in a foreign land are enjoying the joy of celebrating the Spring Festival together. The children have experienced the excitement of the Spring Festival, tasted the flavor of the New Year, and also savored the fun of Chinese New Year customs and culture.

Principal Zhao Caihong (back left) introduced the Hope Chinese School Youth Band (right)

At the dinner, people tasted delicious Chinese food while enjoying the song and dance program carefully prepared by the school.

Hope Chinese School Youth Orchestra and Chorus are performing

Hope Chinese School Youth Symphony Orchestra composed of parents and children has just been established for two months and successfully performed three moving pieces of music at this evening party. At the same time, the accompaniment of more than a dozen members of the school's song and dance troupe also made everyone feel refreshed. Three friends, Yan Jieya, Sun Hongwei and Wang Lejun, sang Chinese songs that everyone is very familiar with.

Yan Jieya sang "Qinghai-Tibet Plateau"

Two girls wore ancient long skirts with water sleeves and performed the dance "Tiannu Scattering Flowers". The children dressed in traditional Chinese costumes performed a fashion show and gave a collective New Year greeting, and the school distributed red envelopes to each child, pushing the atmosphere of the dinner to a climax.

Dance "The Goddess Scatters Flowers"

The most interesting part of the dinner was the multiple lottery activities. From time to time, lucky people received various small prizes. Laughter and blessings continued to ring from every corner. Several friends who were born in the year of dragon got red plastic hanging dragons and laughed so much that they couldn't close their mouths.

Finally, all my friends sang the song "Unforgettable Tonight" that we hear almost every New Year's Eve in China. At the end of the dinner, I heard a friend sigh: How many Spring Festival dinners can be spent together by more than 200 people in a person's life? It was truly an unforgettable night.