Chinese students will perform cultural art forms tonight

Will Kotheimer

Chinese students from Xiamen University will perform in a variety of art forms tonight.

The show, at 7 p.m. in the Downing University Center Theatre, is sponsored by the Confucius Institute, said Wei-Ping Pan, the Institute’s director.

The Xiamen University Art Group is made up of both undergraduate and graduate students with a passion and talent for the arts, Pan said.

The group includes a choir, a dance team, a hip-hop team, a cross-talk team and a T-stage model team and musicians, he said.

The event is a Spring Gala celebrating the beginning of the Chinese New Year, Pan said.

The performance will feature Chinese martial arts, a Fujian puppetry demonstration and ethnic songs and dances from Yunnan, Tibet and Xinjiang. This program will also feature traditional Chinese instruments such as the erhu, pip, dulcimer and bamboo flute,  Pan said.

He said this event is particularly interesting is that the students are not professionals, but selected by their universities to go on tour.

“One of the missions of the CI is to disseminate Chinese language and culture,” Pan said. “What better way to do this than by bringing to Western Kentucky University one of the top performing troupes in China?”