Chinese New Year - Coffee Morning at the Lord Mayor's parlour
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00:00My name's Councillor Jason Zachary, I'm the current Lord Mayor of Portsmouth, and today's event is one of our regular coffee morning, Lord Mayor Charity of Real Coffee Mornings.
00:10We have them second Tuesday of every month, and today's one is probably the highlight of our year, as we have our Chinese dances in to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
00:19I think they're two-fold coffee mornings. One obviously brings some money into our charities, and each Lord Mayor tends to follow the same pattern.
00:27But it also brings people together. A lot of these people look forward to coming to the coffee mornings, it's a social gathering for them.
00:34They get a chance to chat to their friends, they get a little bit of entertainment, take part in a raffle.
00:39There's a combination of events, maybe once a month, a couple of hours, but yeah.
00:43Again, like many Portsmouths, it's a very diverse city. There are lots of different nationalities and cultures here.
00:48The Chinese Association, the Chinese are an important part of the city too. They've been around for a fairly long time in Portsmouth.
00:56I'd say they're a regular on our civic game plan for the year.
01:03So yeah, of course it is. There's a Bangladeshi group there, the Bangladeshi community is very important too.
01:10Lots of events going on. There's each year another one coming to the fore, so yeah, very nice.
01:15So we are here to celebrate the Lantern Festival. Also, it's the last day of the Chinese New Year.
01:21It's quite colourful, because the Lantern Festival has a lot of things to celebrate.
01:26For example, lighting up the lantern, also we eat traditional food, there's rice balls.
01:34Also, everybody going out to watch the lantern and enjoy themselves.
01:40Also, the Lantern Festival, we call it the Chinese Valentine Festival, because everybody can go out in the old days.
01:50The married lady is not allowed to go out, but because of the Lantern Festival, they have a chance to go out and to celebrate.
02:02And they can see the young guy and the young lady all together.
02:10So they can talk to each other.
02:12Exactly, they can talk to each other. So that's for them an exciting day.
02:17So yeah, tell us again what we saw earlier and what we are expecting to see in regards to the dances and some of the workshops that's here as well.
02:24Yeah, today we have a whole dance and it's a very beautiful traditional Chinese dance.
02:31Also, as they present a different Chinese ethnic minority group.
02:38Earlier, you can see one is a Chinese traditional dance and another one is a Korean group.
02:48So that is all part of the Chinese ethnic minority group.
02:55Also, we have a workshop today.
02:57You can see people volunteer and write down some beautiful calligraphy in Chinese.
03:05And people can come over here and ask for their name to be translated.
03:11So we can write down their name in Chinese.
03:15And also we can write down some Chinese characters.
03:18And that is for blessing people.
03:22And you can hang on your wall or your door as a good blessing for the New Year.
03:29We do a coffee warden once a month, every other Tuesday.
03:33And for every single Lord Mayor.
03:35And what we do is we just turn up, we have a cup of tea, have a good old natter, over a cake.
03:40Every single month we have someone else in to talk.
03:43So it's great on the February one because we have the Chinese ladies come in every single year to dance for us.
03:48But every single month we have someone else in.
03:50So every single month it's a different reaction.
03:53So we've had people that have written books, we've had artists in, we've had singers in.
03:58We've had lots of different bits and pieces.
04:00We try to have someone in every month so that they just get up and part.
04:05Okay, if you've got a hand free, give us a wave.
04:08We've got a hand. Everybody, we've got a hand.