Feb 26^th is the Lantern Festival (or Yuan Xiao Festival in Chinese,元宵節), a traditional Chinese festival with great significance, which is on the 15th of the first lunar month, marking the end of New Year celebrations. During the Lantern Festival, family members go out at night to temples carrying paper lanterns and solve riddles on the lanterns. Many Chinese holidays involve lanterns. But the Lantern Festival represents the epitome of this custom.

This year, the School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology held the Lantern Festival event on campus so that the international students could take part into this traditional Chinese festival, playing games, solving lantern riddles and tasting traditional Chinese food. Students brought their favorite hometown food to the event, including Chengdu Longxu crisp (成都龍須酥), Xiaogan Laomi wine (孝感佬米酒), Nanyang beef (南陽黃牛肉), Yunnan rose cake (雲南玫瑰餅) and other delicious snacks from all over the country.

After learning about the brief history of Lantern Festival, the teachers and students were then divided into two teams, namely "South team" and "North team" to solve the 40 riddles. The winning team got to choose their preferred stuffing of Yuan Xiao, a kind of small dumpling balls, which get the name from the festival itself. Everyone could make their own Yuan Xiao with the instructor demonstrated the process of making it. Made of sticky rice flour filled with sweet or salty stuffing and round in shape, the dumpling symbolizes solidarity, completeness and happiness. From this event, international students experienced the on-site Chinese Lantern Festival and enjoyed the friendship as well as delicious foods.

JI Shaoling, Secretary of the SLSB Party Committee, LI Wenchun, Deputy Secretary of the SLSB Party Committee, ZHANG Xiaojun, Vice Dean of the SLSB attended the event.