Home Nelson Branch Newsletters Nelson Branch...

Nelson Branch Newsletter – No. 1, February, 2016

65

2016-Chinese-New-Year

 

XIN NIAN KUAI LE

Happy New Year

 

 

The full pdf version of this newsletter is available at: Nelson Branch Newsletter February 2016

 

We hope that members have had a restful and enjoyable Christmas and New Year and are now looking forward to the coming year.
The Chinese zodiac year of the monkey officially begins on Monday February 8 this year.
As usual, we will be taking over the Eastern Cuisine restaurant in Richmond for a banquet in the following week. There will be a short Annual General Meeting before the banquet begins. We welcome you to join us for this occasion of good food, fellowship, and fun.

 

monkey1_mod
monkey3Chinese New Year Banquet

Eastern Cuisine, Richmond

Sunday 14 February, 6 p.m.

 
To book, please contact Barbara Markland by Tuesday 9 February
Phone: 544 4712 – email: [email protected]

 

Eastern Cuisine at 275 Queen Street in Richmond is well-known for great banquets and we get exclusive use of the restaurant for Sunday night, as long as we have sufficient numbers; which has never been a problem! Your family and friends are all welcome to this celebration.
The banquet charge is a very reasonable $32. The usual juice, beer, and wine will be available for purchase from the restaurant and there will be no corkage charge if you wish to take your own wine.
To make things easier for the restaurant, please pay at the door – by cheque or cash only – or pay beforehand, via internet banking – see below.
Other payments for drinks, you will make directly to the restaurant.
You are also invited to make donations towards the He Ming Qing Scholarships on the night by buying tickets in the raffles for excellent Chinese items – tickets will be just $2 each, or $5 for three, so please remember to bring some gold coins and/or $5 notes.
It would be very much appreciated if everyone could be there by 5.45 pm to enable the brief AGM to begin at 6 pm. There will be no seating plan this year so it would be advantageous if groups could arrive early and together. The banquet will commence about 7 pm.

If you prefer, you can pay for your banquet via internet banking to the NZ China Friendship Society – Nelson Branch bank account at Westpac 03-0703-0369680-00.
Please make sure you enter your name as the reference and then email both Barbara Markland at [email protected] and Treasurer, Royden Smith, at [email protected] so that they can then confirm your payment has been received.

Annual General Meeting: The items on the agenda for this are President’s Report, Financial Report, Election of Officers, and General Business to cover any items which need to be discussed. Nominations will be taken for the committee and new members for the committee would be welcome. If you think you or a friend could make a contribution and would like to be nominated, have a talk with President Ferry.

Meeting dates: In keeping with our arrangement of having general meetings on the last Friday of the month where possible, the following dates have been set:

March 11              April 30              May 27              June 24
July 29                 August 26           October 28       November 25

The September meeting will be a tea-party in the Huangshi Chinese Garden to celebrate the (Chinese) mid-autumn or moon festival – our event will be September 25 (first day of daylight time) although the festival is really September 15. Please keep these dates free.

Farewell to Gina: In December Qianlan Zhou (Gina), our bubbly Mandarin Language Assistant (MLA) from Confucius Institute, returned to China and a group of us gave her a Kiwi farewell by having a barbecue picnic at Tahunanui beach, complete with wonderfully decorated Christmas tree (thank you Barbara) and Secret Santa presents.

This note was received from Gina after the picnic:

Hello my dear friends from NZCFS,

I don’t have the list of all of my friends in NZCFS so I’ll really appreciate it if you can help me to pass my gratitude.

It was so happy and touching in the barbecue party today, I had a real Christmas in advance! I love the Christmas tree, I love the decorations, I love the weather, I love the atmosphere, and I love you all.

I’m so grateful to every one I met here, I’ve learnt so much from you all, spending the 10 months with passionate, loving, and wise people like you made me a little bit stronger. I learnt to be more responsible and think more about education from Christine and Barbara, I learnt to be more open-minded, kind and passionate from Jeanette and Lori, and I learnt to be strong in mind but soft in soul from Royden and Ferry…

I still remember how touched I was when I went to the first meeting I’ve attended, your every effort in improving the communication between NZ and China and the understanding of Chinese culture is wonderful. So instead of getting all the “thanks” from you, I really want to thank you all for everything!
GinaSounds
All the memories with NZCFS will be precious for me, the Conference in May, the Cutural Camp in July, the GCL group and the art exchange and the Christmas party!

Wish you all the best and wish our friendship last forever!
Lots of love!

Warm regards
Gina

Gina has been a wonderful asset and did a good deal towards encouraging schools to use MLAs and to introduce Mandarin into the classrooms.  As a result there are more pupils learning Mandarin, so that Nelson now has 2 MLAs  allocated to the region.

Race Unity Day:  March 20 at Victory Square from 11a.m. to 4 p.m. is Race Unity Day this year. Once again we are planning to have a stall offering a selection of Chinese teas to taste and Chinese knick-knacks for sale. It is an opportunity to put ourselves in front of the public and to answer any questions they may have.

Sister Cities Conference:  From April 28-30 Nelson will be hosting the 2016 Sister Cities New Zealand conference at the Rutherford Hotel. We hope to have some members attending the conference. Details are available on the Nelson City Council website here.
While the link between sister cities is a link between city governments, we are especially interested in the Huangshi link, and continue to be involved, because this NZCFS branch was instrumental in forging the link. Other branches do not all have the same relationship with their councils or sister cities. Nelson City gives us money each year to assist the work we do in maintaining that link by our activities such as hosting delegations.

Huangshi Nelson Garden: Just as we have the Huangshi Chinese Garden here in Nelson to celebrate the Friendly City link, the authorities in Huangshi are planning their ‘Nelson’ Garden. It appears that this will be about 2,500m² (¼ hectare) in area. Some concept drawings have been seen in Nelson and we may show a designer’s ‘walkthrough’ at one of our meetings so that all can see what is being suggested. It is rather impressive.

President’s Greetings: We have received a very brief message of greeting intended for all members, from Dave Bromwich. It reads as follows:

Best wishes for the Year of the Monkey.Dave-Bromwich.1-130x140
We have an exciting year ahead with our Explore South West China Tour in October and of course our annual conference & AGM in Tauranga in May.

Best Wishes
Dave Bromwich
President of NZCFS

South-west China Tour: This tour, mentioned in the President’s Greetings to us, is a 23 day tour in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces where there are many minority tribes and strong Tibetan influence. The region is mountainous and some of the time is above 4000m altitude (that is higher than Mount Cook) so a reasonable level of fitness is asked for. The tour departs NZ October 10 and returns November 3. More details are available on the NZCFS web site NZCFS Southwest China Tour.

Chinese Association New Year Celebration: The Nelson branch of the Chinese Association will have their Chinese New Year celebrations as part of the International Kai Festival at Founders Heritage Park on Monday, February 8 (Waitangi Day holiday). The Chinese Association will be in the Energy Centre from 12 till 3 p.m. More information about the Kai Festival can be found here.

Lost property: Left after our Broadgreen ‘pot-luck’ – a plate carrier in floral material. From the Tahunanui barbecue – hand-painted (fruit) plate, wooden-handled steak knife, yellow-green plastic tumbler. For return of these please contact Wards, ph. 538 0344.

Year of the Monkey: The 2016/17 year of the monkey extends from February 8, 2016, to January 27, 2017. People born in the year of the monkey are variously regarded as likely to be of good intellect and skilful, and often good leaders. They are also thought to be quick-tempered and should learn to be patient. In their families, they are usually considerate and thoughtful.
Traditionally in China, monkeys are seen as clever and bright. Thus many Chinese plan to have children in years of the Monkey, like 2016, so their “Monkey babies” are blessed by the stars with good qualities. There is a forecast that China will have a baby boom in 2016 as a result of this belief.