WMU News

Haenicke Institute for Global Education
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5245 USA
(269) 387-5890

Free Chinese culture workshops offered this spring

Photo of a Chinese knotting piece.
Chinese knotting is one of the skills being taught in the upcoming workshops.

KALAMAZOO, Mich.—The Confucius Institute at Western Michigan University is accepting registrations for five Chinese culture workshops.

The free workshops are being taught in English by instructors from China. They are open to the public and being offered for personal enrichment.

Spring 2016 workshops

  • Chinese Paper Cutting—6 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 15, 4017 Brown Hall
  • Chinese Cooking—6 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 12, TBA ($20 material fee)
  • Chinese Free-hand Style Painting—6 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 19, 4017 Brown Hall.
  • Chinese Plaza Dancing—6 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 17, G10 Bernhard Center.
  • Chinese Knotting—6 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 14, 4048 Brown Hall.

Workshop instructors

  • Zhe Feng is the instructor for the Chinese Paper Cutting workshop. Feng received her bachelor's degree at Beijing Language and Culture University. She majored in teaching Chinese as a foreign language and spent five years teaching Chinese as a second language. During that time, she held several part-time jobs as a Chinese language teacher.

  • Elaine Lui and YuJu Huang are the instructors for the Chinese Cooking workshop. Lui grew up in Hangzhou, China. She is a WMU alumna who earned a master's degree in applied statistics. She describes her cooking style as "light and sweet." Huang is from Taipei, Taiwan, and has been a Kalamazoo resident for 16 years. She enjoys cooking for her family and friends.

  • Zhongmei Lin, the instructor for the Chinese Free-hand Style Painting workshop, was born and raised in a family very focused on the visual arts. She earned a master's degree from the Academy of Art and Design at Tsinghua University, and she worked in media in China for more than eight years.
  • Mingchen Zhao is the instructor for the Chinese Plaza Dancing workshop. She graduated from BLCU with a master's degree in linguistics and applied linguistics. During her seven years of study at BLCU, she gained extensive knowledge of teaching Chinese as a foreign language and also a greater understanding of other cultures.
  • Huanhuan Wu is the instructor for the Chinese Knotting workshop. Her hometown, Weihai, is a beautiful seaside city in the east of Shandong Province. During her undergraduate and graduate studies, she pursued teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages. She has taught Chinese for three years at several schools, including Tsinghua University, Peking University and BLCU.

Register for the workshops online at wmuconfucius.org/workshops. 

For more information, visit the Confucius Institute at wmuconfucius.org. Questions should be directed to the Confucius Institute at @email or (269) 387-3784.

For more news, arts and events, visit wmich.edu/news.