Good Practice

Video Transcript

Anita Ho:

The Chinese instruments are very traditional type of instruments we play at school. They're quite different from Western instruments, but we have the same groups: string instruments, woodwind instruments. Some of the instruments are called '----' and you saw something called '----' and you saw some flutes. All the children enjoy doing these instrument classes, because it gives them a lot of traditional feel of our culture and it complements a lot of the other activities we do because we do dancing school here too, and we do dancing to Chinese music which uses a lot of these instruments.
Lion dancing and unicorn dancing is very traditional again – it’s a martial art form. A lot of the movements that you notice are very like martial arts: a lot of jumping and acrobatics.

And that brings me on to why we at this school do gymnastics, because that as a sport supports a lot of our other cultural activities like the dancing and the kung fu and the lion and unicorn dance, because it teaches you a lot of the posture and lots of balance and lots of flexibility and the acrobatics as well.

I believe this routine that they’re doing is called 'long fist'. A lot of the routines have names and a lot of the movements have names like, you might see it later, 'sparrow splash', 'crane' and what have you. So, in these cultural activities there's a lot of language involved with it too, and the children love doing all these activities, they find it a lot of fun. They love performing to audiences and it gives them lots of confidence, and also it carries on the traditional Chinese culture.

Eva Y, she does our Chinese brush painting class and she incorporates calligraphy into those art classes because Chinese writing in Chinese culture is very artistic. It isn't just a form of communication. It is very stylised and artistic. And so painting and writing is very much associated art form in our culture, and so doing painting of landscapes which is what you saw today with a brush is the same brush that you use for writing, you know, with the different brush strokes and what have you. And as you notice also today most Chinese paintings are monotone, as in a lot of black and a lot of white, and a lot of what is important is the space and not the lines drawn on the piece of paper.

I can tell you now, a lot of the children thoroughly enjoy these non-academic type activities which are part of the Chinese tradition, and it absolutely complements the language classes because to teach these cultural activities you use language and you use music – they all go together. You can't do one without the other. A lot of this, martial arts even, it's very spiritual - it's good for your mind and it's good for your body. It's all one encompassing culture.