ChineseCUBES and NYU Announce First-Ever NYC Chinese Character Festival, A Citywide Celebration of the Chinese Language
NYC, NY (PRWEB) September 28, 2013 -- Today, NYU and ChineseCUBES announced the first-ever Chinese Character Festival (CCF) in New York, a month-long celebration of Chinese characters that comprise the Chinese language and play a significant role in East Asian language, arts and cultures. Co-organized by Chinese education tech startup ChineseCUBES and New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, the festival spans October 6 to November 3, 2013 with opening and closing events to be held at NYU Kimmel Center.
"New York Chinese Character Festival takes participants on a journey to experience and explore the beauty and art of Chinese Characters as well as their relevance to New York through a fun mix of interactive online contests and rewarded check-in spots, in and around the city," said Rex How, CEO of ChineseCUBES.
“It’s wonderful to see our students embrace the language they are learning as more than an academic pursuit, and to see it’s longstanding relevance to the city around them and be able to share that with others in the community beyond their peers.” Prof. Lixing Frank Tang of New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.
“Chinese language learning is not just a path to an international career, it’s also a wonderful celebration of a culture where the language itself is a work of art.” Professor Robin Harvey of New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.
New York City is rich with history, places, and sights related to Chinese culture and language. The Chinese Character Festival features five signature online contests, which give local residents a chance to rediscover and engage with their city and communities through a different lens.
These Online contests include:
• Cultural Map Check-in Contest, encouraging check-ins to Cultural Map locations using the hashtag #CCFestival across social media channels like Foursquare, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr and Twitter. This map was created live by user submitted suggestions of locations of Chinese cultural significance in the New York metro area, including museums, restaurants, cafes, stores and monuments
• Best Chinese Character Tattoo Photo Contest, where participants upload to Facebook photos of the best Chinese character tattoos through October 27, 2013. People can support their favorites by sharing on Facebook and Google+. Judges will choose the top three winners to receive prizes.
• Best Chinese Calligraphy Photo Contest, where participants upload to Facebook photos of their or their friends' Chinese calligraphy through October 27, 2013. People can support their favorites by sharing on Facebook and Google+. Judges will choose the top three winners to receive prizes.
• Best Chinese Character T-shirt Design Contest, where participants submit designs for Chinese character-inspired T-shirts through October 23, 2013. People are invited to support their favorite designs on social media. Judges will choose the top three designs to receive prizes. On Closing Day, the winning designs will be printed on T-shirts and modeled in a “fashion show”.
Judges:
Alan Chow, Chinese American Arts Council (CAAC) board and artistic director, Owner of Soho Gallery 456 since 1989. http://www.caacarts.org
Caspar Lam, designer, writer, Professor of interaction design at Parsons the New School for Design. http://www.synopticoffice.com/
Todd Weinberger, Creative Director of Inked Magazine. http://inkedmag.com
James O’Brien, Interdisciplinary Designer and Tattoo Artist. http://www.excellentwork.net/
Joseph Aloi, world-renowned tattoo artist and multidisciplinary artist. http://jk5nyc.net
Dr. Erke Yu，俞爾科，Doctor, Writer, Artist, Calligrapher
http://artist.artxun.com/25266-yuerke/
Gerald Pryor, Associate Professor of Art and Art Education, NYU Steinhardt and Artist in Residence Photo Head. http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty_bios/view/Gerald_Pryor
The four online competitions will be bookended by Opening Day and Closing Day festivities, both held at NYU Kimmel Center’s Rosenthal Pavilion. The Opening Day will be held on Sunday, October 6th and feature a Taiwanese delicacies reception, cultural performances and hands-on Chinese character activities and games, including a Chinese spelling bee. The Closing Day will be held on Sunday, November 3rd with an awards ceremony for the winners of the online contests, a T-shirt design fashion show and other cultural games and performances.
The idea of the New York Chinese Character Festival came about via collaboration between Professors Frank Tang and Robin Harvey of NYU Steinhardt, Director and Coordinator of DCLT, and Rex How, Taiwanese publisher and founder of ChineseCUBES, had organized the 8th Annual Chinese Character Festival in Taipei in 2012. Due to the popularity of such Chinese character festivals in Asia, and the rising trend and interest in learning Chinese in the United States, How with the help of Tang and Harvey, brought the festival stateside to give New Yorkers the opportunity to experience and explore Chinese characters in their own communities and daily lives.
The festival was first created to raise public awareness and reinvigorate interest in the ancient writing system, reminding people of the history, heritage, and cultural relevance of Chinese characters. Over the years, the festival has evolved to become an annual celebration of Chinese language, art, and culture; and starting this fall it will be a part of NYC as well, celebrating not only traditional Chinese language and culture but also the breadth and depth of culture here in the United States and specifically New York and the surrounding areas.
About ChineseCUBES
ChineseCUBES is the future of Chinese learning—an entertaining and effective learning program suited for the 21st century. Utilizing a new concept, approach, and Augmented Reality (AR) technology, ChineseCUBES creates a never-before-seen multi-sensory learning experience. ChineseCUBES breaks through the limitations of traditional printed teaching materials by implementing a "characters into words" teaching method. With ChineseCUBES, users only need to learn 200 characters to obtain a basic yet strong foundation in the language. ChineseCUBES was designed for beginners of all ages and is especially ideal for anyone who wants to learn but has no previous background in the language. Follow us on Facebook and find out more at http://www.chinesecubes.com.
About DCLT of NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development
Project Developing Chinese Language Teachers (DCLT) is a project funded by the Freeman Foundation since 2006. The objectives of the DCLT include developing qualified Chinese language teachers to teach in American K-12 schools, providing professional development activities for in-service teachers, and conducting research in teaching and learning of Chinese language and culture. Located in the heart of Greenwich Village, NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development prepares students for careers in the arts, education, health, media, and psychology. Since its founding in 1890, the Steinhardt School's mission has been to expand human capacity through public service, global collaboration, research, scholarship, and practice. To learn more about DCLT of NYU Steinhardt, visit:
http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/teachlearn/dclt.
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Jesse Poe, ChineseCUBES, http://www.chinesecubes.com, +1 (917) 4342858, [email protected]
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