Chinese New Year at true!
At true Student Living, we celebrate holidays from various cultures around the globe. The most recent celebration was Chinese New Year, which we celebrated at true Newcastle. Every year is associated with one of 12 different animals in the cycle and 2020 is the year of the rat! There are many traditions associated with this holiday, some old and some new. When planning a celebration for Chinese New Year we decided to blend a mix of both to ensure we threw a successful event!
New Year is a time to spend with friends and family. Many of our guests were unable to travel home to celebrate with their own families. Never the less, our student guests have built relationships that will last a lifetime and friends that they would consider as family.
The colour red is associated with good luck for the year ahead, which is why you will see this colour everywhere during Chinese New Year celebrations. From lanterns, clothes, food, dragons and gifts - it made sense for us to decorate our festival zone with red lanterns, red Chinese snacks, along with fortune cookies!
One of the oldest traditions is ‘lucky money’, money is placed in a red envelope and given by elders to the young - this is supposed to pass good luck on for the year ahead. At true we placed chocolate coins into red envelopes to hand out to our guests - in the hope this brings good luck to all students with exams and dissertations this year.
In Newcastle city centre there is also no shortage of Chinese New Year celebrations and parades. We took our students into the heart of the celebrations where they immersed themselves in the culture, tried different food, watched the spectacular parade and experienced the traditions first-hand!