The first of 2011’s six cultural evenings was held in the Courtyard on a very cold (but fortunately fine) evening last night.  Traditionally, the annual Chinese Cultural Evening (CCE) is the largest of our cultural evenings, reflecting the College’s location in coastal China and the composition of the student population.  This year’s CCE was no exception.

Each of our cultural evenings is designed to showcase the music, dance, politics, contemporary issues and culture of one of the macro-regions of the world.  Like all our cultural evenings, last night’s CCE was entirely planned and co-ordinated by our students - in this case, our students from China, including of course Hong Kong.

We had been well prepared for The Big Evening.  At morning tea time each day this week, we had been treated to loud Chinese music (mainly Canto-pop to be more precise) in the Courtyard, accompanying some participatory demonstrations of a range of Chinese sports.  On Thursday evening we had a special GIF (Global Issues Forum) on the topic of Urbanisation in China.  And then, finally, the big night came, beginning with a special 9-course banquet dinner in the canteen, followed by almost two hours of sensational cultural performances in the courtyard that were diverse, of a professional standard, and which never dragged for a second.

Last night, as often happens, I was walking back to my home after the performance and found myself speaking with some parents.  They were in awe of the wide range of talents, abilities and skills that Li Po Chun United World College seems to develop in its students.  The question they asked me was a simple one - “how do you do it?”.  The

parents identified and affirmed a wide range of skills that they knew had been an important part of preparing for the excellent performances - the students’ determination to achieve excellence, sound time management, deep cultural understandings, a high degree of idealism, rare initiative and outstanding leadership in a wide variety of fields - to list just a few that I remember them mentioning.

I appreciated the parents’ comments.  Nonetheless, as I commented to them, I think that perhaps the most remarkable skill that we develop is the ability of students to organise themselves into teams in order to achieve outcomes that can only be described as ‘extraordinary’.  I think of some of the projects that our students are currently working on, such as the Sino-Japan Youth Conference, the North Korean Goodwill Initiative, working with the victims of human trafficking for sexual slavery in Cambodia, working to provide medical clinics

in poor rural areas of China, and many many more cutting edge projects.  Some of these undertakings would be ambitious, and even intimidating, for a 40 or 50 year old professional event-manager, and yet our 16, 17 and 18 year old students take on such challenges as a matter of course.

And we saw the fruits of this same high level of teamwork in last night’s CCE.

I have assembled a gallery of 93 images to show just a few aspects of this wonderful evening.  I hope that the photos convey something of the atmosphere and the excitement of last night’s great event - I know that sadly they can’t convey the life, the movement and the sounds of the performances, so please try to use your imagination as you look at the photos.

The image gallery can be seen HERE.

I often tell people how proud I am of our students.  Anyone attending last night’s Chinese Cultural Evening would have no difficulty understanding why.