Chinese New Year

Yesterday I was celebrating Chinese New Year in a small occasion held by Finnish branch of Lions International. I was invited there by gallerist Paula Nunes.

It was quite hard to find the place without any guiding signs and -20°C was definetly not helping the process. The place was very close to sea in Helsinki and in some points we were walking in wind tunnels where the moving air accumulates and flows in high speeds. Very cold! When we finally got in we were served wine to make the blood flow again.

There was a few very nice performances. First we were served with music by Ms. Li Yan, who played an instrument called guzheng which was quite close in style to Finnish kantele. Li Yan's performance started a trip to China with magical and beautiful melodies. Kind of those that you would hear in a Chinese restaurant, but this was now the original classic piece of Michelangelo's David compared to a cheap plastic copy bought on a souvenir shop.

Right after the musical performance master Zhang Fang was performing Tai Chi Ch'uan. His movements were very well balanced and smooth. Even though Tai Chi Ch'uan nowadays is thought as a physical exercise instead of a real martial arts, I was noticing very many resemblances to karate. As a point of curiousity, Zhang Fang was winning the group championship of wushu in 70's. In the same team there was also a young man called Jet Li.

After Zhang Fang's Tai Chi Ch'uan a Finnish girl Nora Silvennoinen performed her part with a sword. She is apparently one of the best students of Zhang Fand and has also won many medals in international competitions.

Along came food. We were eating many different Chinese cuisines and filling a quiz about China at the same moment. One of the questions was 'what is the highest mountain of China'. I knew that Mount Everest was making a border to China, but learned only afterwards that the border between China and Nepal goes straight on the peak of Roof of the World. I wonder if they have passport control on the top for those who want to conquer Mount Everest from the side of Nepal...

When we had finished our food Mr. Da Dai performed music with erhu (two-stringed violin). He played quite ok, but I was distracted too much with both full stomach and the kitsch Chinese background he was playing. The background went now into the category of cheesy background music of Chinese restaurants.

I was enjoying the whole evening and can now happily wish all of you Xin nian yu kuai. It's now year 4703 according to Chinese calendar. Makes me feel Western culture very young again.