To celebrate the Chinese New Year, some of Brampton’s staff joined our Chinese students for an evening in China Town. The students booked a restaurant and ordered traditional dishes for us all to enjoy. Acasia, Effie and Victoria wrote:
‘On 30th January we celebrated the Chinese New Year with teachers and friends in a restaurant called New China in Chinatown which is in Central London. It is a Chinese restaurant and serves different cuisines, some of which are quite hot and spicy. We booked a large, private room downstairs and in it were a couple of big tables with chairs and a karaoke machine.
We ordered two kinds of soup – one was clear and spicy and the other was chicken with mushrooms and both were very tasty. We then had hot pots which we prepared at the tables adding rice noodle, crab sticks, tofu and mushrooms as well as many other things. Then we had some more traditional dishes such as sour and spicy potatoes, spicy fish in hot pot and everyone ate with chopsticks (some found this rather difficult.)
If we had been at home to celebrate, we would probably have been sitting with relatives and family members at a table, having a huge meal. Later the older generation would have handed out red envelopes containing money. At midnight there are always amazing fireworks which light up the sky. It is a tradition that we stay up late on that day so many people may not go to bed all night’.
