Free Year of the Snake Family-Friendly Event

To celebrate the upcoming Year of the Snake, the Association of Northern California Chinese Schools (ANCCS) and the Taiwan Benevolent Association of San Jose will provide free cultural lessons for the Silicon Valley community.

According to David Wang, president of the ANCCS, the family-friendly event on Feb. 3 will feature Chinese calligraphy, because it is a Chinese New Year's custom to write well-wishing words on red paper for posting.

The Chinese will write an auspious-sounding couplet on two strips of red paper and post them on both sides of the door. The two lines in each Chinese New Year's couplet must be in the same length and in parallel structure.

Sometimes the Chinese will also post a horizontal line of congratulatory words above the door, and the word fu (meaning “luck") upside down on the door because the word for "upside down" sounds the same as the word for "arrival" in Chinese.

There will be calligraphy masters writing Chinese New Year's couplets at the Feb. 3 event and giving the couplets away to audience members.

There will also be teachers showing children how to write Chinese words with a brush, how to tie a fancy Chinese knot for decoration, how to handmake a lantern, and how to create a puppet out of a dough.

In the meantime, some Chinese-New-Year-related posters will be on display. They are all winning works of the ANCCS poster contest.

A lion dance will entertain the crowd at the South Bay Cultural Center, located at 1269 Forgewood Ave. in Sunnyvale. Complimentary refreshments will be served at the event, which runs from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Feb. 3, a week before Chinese New Year, which is on Feb. 10.

To inquire about the event, email anccschools@gmail.com

To learn more about Chinese New Year's customs, especially about the couplets, click here for A Poetic Portal to Chinese Culture, an e-book by the author of this article.