Saturday, November 7, 2015

Halloween at the HNC



Every year the HNC student committee (banwei) organizes a Halloween party. What is it like to plan a Halloween party in China? Read on to hear more about the festivities from our student blogger, Chelsea. 

Hi Everyone!

It’s been a while but,

BOO! 

Did I scare you? (Probably not…)

Recently the Hopkin Nanjing Center’s student committee hosted our annual Halloween Party—this year’s highlights were carnival games, student DJs, a costume contest, a student murder mystery play, and our very own HNC boy band, Chuanerzard (they were going for a combo of chuan , a popular kabob snack, and Charizard, the Pokémon-nerds in the best of ways)!

As a member of the student committee I can give you a quick scoop on all of the prep and fun events we had leading up to the big day!

To kick-off the start of October we hosted a series of Halloween movies on Friday nights in the student lounge. Anyone a fan of Hocus Pocus, Halloweentown, or the Shining? Before screening Hocus Pocus, I gave a mini-lecture to the Chinese students about the history of Halloween and how it came to be so popular in America. We also had the American international students help Chinese students brainstorm what costumes they should wear. We also started asking students to volunteer at the party, and everyone was pretty supportive.

While most of our Halloween events are for HNC students only, the Halloween party is always open to students from other universities in Nanjing who can buy tickets to attend.

To advertise the party, Janey (the Chinese female representative of the student committee) and I made a poster and started promoting the event to both Chinese and foreign students on Nanjing University’s campus. It was a lot of work, but in the end we had almost 400 people attend the party! The party is also a really great way also to meet non-HNC students from around the world and China.




In the midst of presentations, papers and projects, we also held a pumpkin-carving competition! Although we got all of the pumpkins from Taobao instead of a pumpkin patch, the Chinese students were still really excited to carve them for the first time. Everyone was starting to get into the Halloween spirit with some classic Halloween party music while decorating the HNC.





Coordinating Taobao deliveries and organizing the events for the night was a lot of work, but in the end it paid off! Come Halloween, the HNC was spooky and ready for ghouls and ghosts of all kinds.






Halloween was a lot of fun and I was glad to finally be able to share an American holiday with the students at the HNC.

I have more papers and presentations coming up, but look forward for posts on the upcoming Thanksgiving Fall Break and my favorite places around HNC!

Catch you all soon!

Written by Chelsea Toczauer, MAIS Student