Celebrating the Beijing Winter Olympics – in Northern Ireland

The Millburn pupils took two-and-a-half weeks to learn the original lyrics in Mandarin to Meet Me in Beijing, one of the official songs of the Olympics.

"We worked very hard to ensure that we could do it justice," explained Sharon Lamont, the school's headteacher.

"It's a celebratory song and we like to celebrate things that are very important."

The teachers explained the background of the song and its meaning in English, and then worked with Chinese teachers on the pronunciation of the original lyrics in Mandarin.

Friday morning saw the start of the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 campaign. This was marked by the prestigious China/UK, ‘Welcoming the Winter Olympics and Going to the Future Together’, event. @Beijing2022 pic.twitter.com/xqhQztWQ35

— Millburn Primary School (@MillburnSchool) December 19, 2021

"Our children are very excited about the Olympics," said Lamont.

"They're very aware of where they're taking place, the kind of activities. Obviously, Northern Ireland is not known for its winter sports, but they will be following it with great interest and I know for a fact that many of them aspire to be the best that they can be. And you don't get much better than being able to represent your country at the Olympics."

Some of the pupils painted some amazing posters inspired by the Winter Olympics. Listen to what inspired them.

A primary school in Northern Ireland sounds like an odd place to be hearing groups of children singing in Mandarin, but it's not the first time this has happened in the town of Coleraine.

Back in February 2020, when the pandemic ravaged China's Hubei province, the children of Coleraine's Millburn Primary School came together to sing Let the World be Full of Love in Mandarin in support of the millions of people of Wuhan under lockdown.

The performance came from the children's desire to do something for their Chinese teachers, many of whom have families in Wuhan.

"It was coming very much from a place where we wanted to reach out and say, Look, we can't do very much, but if this brings a smile to somebody or even just lets somebody know that we're thinking about them, well, that's enough for us," said Lamont.

Their heartfelt effort was so greatly appreciated in China that students from a school in the west of the country recorded a rendition of Danny Boy in English to show their gratitude and cement their friendship with the pupils in Northern Ireland.

"We were absolutely blown away and overwhelmed by the response that it had, and we weren't anticipating that at all – and it was lovely," said Lamont.

Millburn Primary School works in partnership with the Confucius Institute at Ulster University in Belfast, the only one of its kind in Northern Ireland.

Thanks to the institute's teachers, children start speaking Mandarin at the impressive age of four.

Professor Paul Seawright, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Ulster University, said he had been amazed by the interest in learning Mandarin in Northern Ireland's schools.

"There's a real appetite for young people to learn Mandarin," he said.

"They see what's going on in the world. You've got to remember that young people are seeing Chinese culture in a way that we didn't see ourselves, through games and social groups and so on, and they see that the language and culture is something that they need to connect them to."

Since the Confucius Institute was launched 10 years ago, it has taught a staggering total of 150,000 students.

"We have some fairly politicized issues here in Northern Ireland about the Irish language – should you teach Irish in schools, should you not?" said Seawright.

"So some schools will teach Irish, some schools will not teach Irish, but actually they all teach Mandarin. So it's kind of a nice cultural leveler on the language front."

The reason why Mandarin is so popular in Northern Ireland might be partly linked to its flourishing Chinese community.

"We've always had quite a strong Chinese community here in Northern Ireland. We're not a particularly culturally diverse part of the UK, but actually, the Chinese community has always been probably the biggest part of that," Seawright explained.

The Beijing Winter Olympics will roar onto the scene almost at the same time as China will celebrate the beginning of a new year, the year of the Tiger, which will officially start on February 1.

The Tiger is one of the most beloved of the 12 Chinese Zodiac signs, a symbol of confidence, good fortune and courage.

People born in the years 1926, 1938, 1950, 1962, 1974, 1986, 1998, 2010 and 2022 are born under the sign of the Tiger, and are considered to share an ambitious and competitive personality as well as a tendency to be generous and seek justice.

The Chinese New Year, also called Spring Festival and Lunar New Year, is celebrated in China and Chinese communities around the world.

Every year, those celebrating exchange red envelopes filled with money; visit relatives and temple fairs or new year markets; put up decorations in their freshly-cleaned homes; participate or admire traditional dragon dances; and sit around the table with their families eating dumplings, sweet rice balls and nián gāo, a rice cake supposed to bring good luck.

Students at Bangor Academy and Sixth Form College have been discovering and embracing this traditions. See how they learned how to make Chinese dumplings.

And here's some of the drawings students from Millburn, St Catherine's and St Mary's Primary Schools have made to celebrate the upcoming Year of the Tiger – together with the more mature interpretation from older students at Lumen Christi College in Derry.