Event: Chinese New Year 2010 – Year of the Tiger
Date: Sunday 21 February 2010
Time: 12 to 6pm
Venue: Central London (Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, Chinatown)
FREE EVENT All welcome
The capital’s Chinese New Year celebrations are set to transform central London on Sunday 21 February 2010. Visitors to Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square and London Chinatown will be able to welcome in the Year of the Tiger in spectacular style – with Chinese arts and entertainment from international and home-grown artists, and food, firecrackers and fireworks.
In Trafalgar Square, two groups from China (Sichuan Art Troupe and Central Ethnic Song and Dance Ensemble) will perform world-class dance, music and acrobatics after an official opening ceremony. There will also be firecrackers, Chinese dragons, lions and Chinese acrobatics.
Meanwhile, in a specially decorated Chinatown there will be cultural stalls, food and lion dance displays. Shaftesbury Avenue will become “Hong Kong in London Chinatown” with a stage featuring performances by local Chinese artists.
A colourful fireworks display in Leicester Square will close the celebrations.
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A British students, Mary-Jess Leaverland, won a singing competition in a f X Factor-style TV contest in China. The Guardian reports:
A couple of years ago Mary-Jess Leaverland was pleased to get second place in a local youth talent competition at Stroud Subscription Rooms in Gloucestershire.
Now the 19-year-old student is celebrating victory in a Chinese version of X Factor watched by millions.
Leaverland, from Gloucester, entered the competition during a year abroad to study for her joint honours degree in Chinese and music.
If you’re interested in watching Mary-Jess Leaverland in competition, you can watch some of the videos from the TV programme here.
The Guardian reports Conservative Party’s policies in cracking down students visas:
Conservatives to crack down on UK visas for foreign students
* Patrick Wintour, political editor
* The Guardian, Saturday 9 January 2010
A clampdown on foreign students’ visas, including requirements for some student applicants to hand over an annual £2,000 bond and a tightening of the colleges entitled to sponsor students, is proposed today by the shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling.
The Tories, who regard the student visa system as the weakest link in Britain’s border controls, would also place a ban on students switching courses in this country.
Grayling has been consulting higher education about the proposals, aware that foreign students are money-spinners for the financially pressed sector. He claims the consequence of Britain’s lax controls is “tens of thousands of bogus students in the UK and hundreds of unregulated colleges providing student visas, but little education”.
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