Area students experience taste of Chinese culture
Fidelity Chinese School
presents performances
in Manalapan, Howell
By dave benjamin
Staff Writer

Students from the Fidelity Chinese School of Marlboro brought a dragon and the culture of China with them to the Taylor Mills and Lafayette Mills schools in Manalapan and the Newbury School in Howell last week.

The students from the Chinese school came to celebrate the Chinese new year, being marked this year as the Year of the Horse.

Dr. Chee Ching, the school’s former principal, guided the celebration and performances. The present principal at the school is Dr. Gwo-Ming Jan. Approx-imately 220 students ranging in age from 4-18 attend classes at the school on Saturday mornings at the Marlboro Mid-dle School. The Fidelity Chinese School was founded in 1994.

"The students come to the Chinese school to learn language and culture," Ching said. "The students come from all areas including Howell, Princeton, Eng-lishtown, Marlboro, and East Brunswick."

Throughout the performances, the elementary school students in Manalapan and Howell were treated to the melodies of a Chinese orchestra, led by Ya-Tien Ko. Ko’s daughter, Brittany, 9, is a third-grade student at the Taylor Mills School. She also participates in the Fidelity Chinese School orchestra.

There are several sections of instruments in the Chinese orchestra, Ko explained, as the musicians gave a demonstration.

Explaining the sections of the orchestra to the children, the director named the bowed string instruments: erhu, a two-string violin; jinghu, a Peking opera violin; banhu, the highest pitched two-string violin; gaohu, a high pitched two-string violin; zhonghu, a two-string Chinese viola; dahu, low-pitch, two-string bass; and gehu, a Chinese cello.

Moving on to the percussion section, he named the drum; twin bells; muyu, a wooden block shaped like a fish; bangzi, the wood block; lo, a gong; and yunlo, the gong chimes.

Four instruments make up the wind section: dizi, a horizontal bamboo flute; hslao, a vertical bamboo flute with five holes in front and one hole on the back; sheng, a mouth organ; and sona, a Chinese oboe.

"The wood flute is over 4,500 years old," explained the director. "It’s different from the western flute."

Additionally, there are eight different plucking instruments: qin, the ancient lute that was invented by Emperor Fu-She some 5,200 years ago. At first it had five strings and then, in the Zhou Dynasty (1122-770 B.C.) two strings were added to make seven in all.

He continued naming the others: the pipa, a lute; liuqin, a small lute; zheng, a zither invented in the Chiu Dynasty at the time of the building of the Great Wall; sanxian, a three-string guitar; yangqin, a butterfly harp which originated in the Ming Dynasty, (1368-1644 A.D); yuehqin, a moon-shaped mandolin; and ruan, a round lute; all add to the sound of the orchestra.

With all of the instruments combining their sounds the orchestra performed for the children. Maybe it was the music, or maybe it was the new year atmosphere that aroused a 60-foot long yellow and red dragon that came to the celebration and performed the dragon dance.

The dragon flowed through the air and then came to rest. It was then awakened by loud sounds. It danced. It bowed and then departed.

Most children in the audience have seen a yo-yo. But a Chinese yo-yo is not exactly the same. The Chinese model is not attached directly to its string. Instead it is free to slide across a loop of string, and can be tossed from person to person and caught on the string.

Two sets of Chinese yo-yo experts demonstrated the Chinese "toy" yo-yo as the audience listened to "Canon in D" by Pachebel, which was played on Chinese musical instruments. Many of the children in the audience marveled at the performance.

A Women Soldier’s Fan Dance, a traditional Chinese dance, was performed by dancers who were dressed in red and black costumes.

The new year event ended with a Kung-Fu demonstration by a group of students and their teachers — Paul Wang, Freehold, and Jeffrey Yee, Marlboro. Channing Huang, 8, a third-grader at the Newbury School, is a member of the Kung-Fu demonstration group.

Ching said the holiday lasts for 15 days and at the end of that time a special lantern ceremony is held.

"It was just wonderful," said Newbury School Principal Diane DiDonato. "Our kids don’t know enough about the Chinese new year."

DiDonato said the performance was extremely well received by her students, a nice way to be immersed in the special holiday of another culture. She noted that the children were very respectful and accepting of the cultural differences.

"Everything was very well run," she said. "It was very professionally done. The children who performed ranged in ages and they did all kinds of things. The students in our school learned a lot about the Chinese new year. It was a positive, educational, culturally enlightening experience. I would love to have them back every year."