Written by Katy
05/07/2020 Cultural Event Guzheng--Zither
For today's cultural event, we learned how to play a traditional Chinese Zither, known in Mandarin as a Guzheng古筝.
The teacher started off the class by showing us the different Guzheng that she had in her classroom and talking about the prices. They are very big and expensive instruments! She then taught us the names of all of the notes and how to know which string was which.
After correcting our hand and foot placements, she taught us two songs. The first was rather simple and the second a little bit more difficult. But even the simple songs sounded very beautiful on this instrument! The teacher was very kind and encouraging, with a bit of trial and error, we were all able to play our two songs together in-sync.
At the end of class, the teacher played a few songs for us. The music was beautiful. So beautiful that once I fly back home, I might have to ditch my keyboard and save up for my very own Guzheng.
06/11/2020 Traditional Chinese Painting
For today's event, we learned a simple but very beautiful style of painting. The teacher taught us a method to paint a flower and leaves. We simply had to add a dark and a light color to our paintbrush and press it down onto the paper to make the shape of each petal. We then added a different color for the middle of the flower and a few strokes and lines for some leaves.
Easy and fun riiight? Well, with the language barrier and everyone being their own worst art critic, it took us each a bit of time to get the hang of it and like our results. But, if I do say so myself, all of our pictures turned out unique and nice-looking.
