KUALA LUMPUR, 15 February 2008 - The UCSI Chinese Cultural Society (CCS) held its Chinese New Year (CNY) Extravaganza at its campus today. The event which highlighted traditions practiced during the Chinese New Year as well as various Chinese cultural activities, was launched by Dato’ Ong Tee Keat, the Deputy Minister of Higher Education of Malaysia by striking the Chinese traditional drum 9 times to signify the 9th day of the lunar year celebrations.

In his speech, the Deputy Minister commended UCSI students for taking the initiative to organise and manage the event. He said that this experience teaches the necessary soft skills that would give them the edge in management when they join the workforce later.

Group President and Vice Chancellor of UCSI, Peter T. S. Ng said that the event was held to share the culture and traditions of this Lunar New Year with staff and students of UCSI and its surrounding community. “UCSI’s corporate philosophy has always been to be a responsible corporate citizen. This project complements this philosophy as it seeks to open up opportunities to increase our participation in the community,” he said.

The organizing committee from CCS put-up a fantastic line-up of performances which began with the energetic and brilliant Lion Dance performance by the Chin Woo Association followed by the Chinese Orchestra made up of students from Sekolah Menengah Taman Connaught, while the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) Branch of Bandar Tun Razak performed CNY songs, a Chinese Opera piece as well as a “Bollywood” Dance.

UCSI CCS students put up a drama, featuring CNY traditions and beliefs which drew lots of laughter and applause. They also sang lots of New Year songs to get everyone into the festive mood. The UCSI School of Music performed three instrumental pieces which were very well received.

Two students from the Middle East, Mohammad Sharill from Iraq and Muhammad S. Neyma from Jordan, who are both studying for their Foundation in Arts programme at UCSI said that the CNY Extravaganza was a very interesting event and that they learnt a lot about Chinese culture from this event alone.

A calligraphy competition was held earlier in the day whereby participants were divided into various categories. The categories included the Open category, non-Chinese category and secondary schools category. The non-Chinese category saw Year 2 Bachelor of Science (Hons.) Business Information Systems student from India, Sundaresan Sriram, clinching first place.

The night ended with a lucky draw and at its peak, drew an audience of around 1,000 people.