To celebrate the official 4,708th Chinese Lunar New Year, the Conejo Chinese Cultural Association will illuminate Ventura County by hosting a community event celebrating the year of the rabbit.
“The most exciting part is that the Chinese culture is being reached out to all the local schools in the area,” said Carol Woo, general manager for the Chinese New Years event. “This is a pretty epic milestone for a lot of the surrounding Chinese students.”
This year, the CCCA is planning on having students from the Thousand Oaks Chinese School choir, Thousand Oaks Chinese Folk Ensemble and other students from the Chinese classes in Ventura County to come out to perform.
The students will put on a show mainly composed of traditional Chinese dances, singing, and poem recitals.
“The message that we are trying to send out is for all of the Chinese community to come out and celebrate,” said Woo. “Even though we are in the United States, we still have that tradition and culture that we celebrate.”
Karen Han, a renowned erhu virtuoso, will be just one of the special guest performers at the Chinese New Years celebration.
The erhu is a two-string violin and is known as the official Chinese violin. She said that playing the erhu is difficult, compared to a typical four-string violin because the erhu does not have a fingerboard.
