A crowd of 200 people waited with bated breath Friday night at Jesse Hall. Finally 11-year-old Xi Fang Zhang appeared on stage in traditional Peking Opera costume.
Zhang was one of the 64 students who performed at MU’s first Chinese Culture and Art Night.
The show, held by the MU Confucius Institute, the Office of the Vice Provost for International Programs and China Society for People’s Friendship Studies provided an opportunity for the local Chinese community to celebrate the new year and promote Chinese arts and culture.
Posing at the center of the stage, Zhang slowly turned in her golden dragon robe as she started to sing and narrate in old Peking dialect. Her heavily powdered face, vibrant red lips and bold eyeliner appeared striking under the blazing spotlight.
Along with Zhang, the group was made up by students and teachers from BaYi Middle School and HaiDian Foreign Language Shi Yan Middle School in Beijing.
In addition to Peking Opera, a variety of programs were presented at the show, ranging from Chinese folk music that features pipa, the Chinese guitar and cucurbit flute to ethnic dance and martial arts.
Chong Hui Liu, the accompanied martial arts teacher at BaYi Middle School said in Mandarin that she felt honored to be able to spread cultural awareness personally in the United States.
“I’ve been practicing martial arts all my life but I was never able to promote our culture abroad,” Liu said.
Liu said the majority of the visiting students and scholars have never been to the U.S. and are thrilled to spend the Chinese New Years overseas.
The occasion brought a unique experience to a lot of the audience because usually the Chinese students on campus put on an annual show called “China Night” featuring MU students.
“I think the event this year is very different,” Joey Clemons, attendee and international banking consultant at the U.S. Bank branch on campus, said. “It’s nice to see the high school students get to come all the way from Beijing to perform here in Columbia, but at the same time I miss the one put together by MU students.”
Vice Provost for International Programs Handy Williamson Jr. said the event was a collaboration between MU, Shanghai Normal Univeristy and the Confucius Institute headquarter in Beijing at a higher level. He said programs like this serve as a bridge for local residents to understand and appreciate different culture.
“It’s a chance for the people in Columbia to have a glimpse into the ethnic diversity of China as well as to the talents of the students who were performing,” he said. “We hope that people will feel a need to become closer and interact more with people from different cultures.”
Williamson added that it is likely for the Columbia public school system and schools across the country to have opportunities to learn Chinese languages in the near future.