Wednesday, February 14, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
9
Welcoming the Year of the Dog
By Jodi Schneider McNamee
Correspondent
The Chinese New Year,
also called Spring Festival,
has more than 4,000 years of
history. It is the grandest and
most important annual event
for Chinese people.
For thousands of years,
the Chinese lunar calendar
has been based on a 12-year
repeating cycle that inte-
grates 11 real animals and
one mythical one (a dragon).
And on February 16,
2018, we will be entering the
Year of the Dog, the 11th ani-
mal in the Chinese Zodiac.
Each sign is associated
with one of five elements:
metal, water, wood, fire and
earth. In 2018, the Dog is
paired with earth, making it
the year of the Brown Earth
Dog.
Last Saturday, Sisters
High School (SHS) Chinese
teacher David Perkins and
four Chinese exchange
educators, Dan Dan, Eva
Zhang, Laura Zhang and
Diana Liu, celebrated the
Chinese New Year together
at The University of Oregon
Confucius Institute for
Global China Studies.
“We all left for Portland
last Friday excited about the
Chinese New Year gathering
celebration,” Perkins told The
Nugget.
Eva Zhang and Laura
Zhang are exchange interns
working on their master’s
degrees in education, and
are helping teach Chinese
at SHS. They also travel to
Sisters Middle School to
teach fifth-graders.
Diana Liu is in her second
year teaching Chinese full-
time at Sisters Elementary
School.
And Dan Dan, who
resides in Inner Mongolia, an
autonomous region in China,
is in her first year teaching at
SHS.
The Chinese Zodiac,
known as Sheng Xiao, is
based on the 12-year cycle,
each year in that cycle related
to an animal sign. These signs
are the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit,
dragon, snake, horse, sheep,
monkey, rooster, dog and pig.
Your zodiac animal is depen-
dent on the year in which you
were born, and people born in
a given year are said to have
personality traits associated
with that year’s animal sign.
You can use a zodiac online
calculator to search for your
Chinese Zodiac animal sign.
The dog is associated
with exuberance, kindness,
good fortune, harmony and
humanitarianism. And ideal-
ism overshadowing material-
ism. Being one of the tradi-
tional festivals, it is the time
for whole families to reunite,
which is similar to Christmas
Day for us.
Perkins is a tiger, and this
Nugget correspondent hap-
pens to be a horse.
Laura Zhang noted, “This
year, the Year of the Dog will
be a very friendly and active
year, especially for those who
are born in the Year of the
Dog.”
Legend has it that the
order of the zodiac animals
was determined by the order
in which each finished a
swimming contest, called the
Great Race, across a wide
river. While the dog was a
strong swimmer, he also liked
to play and frolic with the
other animals; thus, he came
in next to last, followed only
by the pig. (The rat came in
first.)
Sisters’ Chinese teachers
are planning to celebrate their
new year in Chinese class
Friday, February 16.
Teaching kids of all ages
about celebrations around the
world broadens their minds
and increases their cultural
awareness.
“We will be doing things
like Chinese paper cut-
outs and Chinese calligra-
phy,” Perkins said. “And
we also may have Chinese
dumplings.”
The art of paper-cutting in
China may date back to the
second century C.E. As paper
became more affordable,
paper-cutting became one of
he most important types of
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Chinese folk art.
Liu may be planning to
have students paint Chinese
lanterns, and the class will
learn about the kinds of food
they eat in China.
It may be a one-day cel-
ebration in the Sisters School
District, but in China the
Chinese New Year is cele-
brated for 16 days (from New
Year’s Eve to the Lantern
Festival). The preparations
start seven days before New
Year’s Eve. And many activi-
ties for this period are tradi-
tional customs.
Sisters schools benefit by
an ongoing cultural exchange
between Chinese educators
and all three Sisters schools,
especially since China is the
most populous country in the
world and may very soon be
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