Mandarin Students Visit New Chinatown

On January 10, St. Luke’s Mandarin students embarked on a fabulous, interactive Chinese adventure in preparation for the celebration of Chinese New Year. Students traveled to Flushing, Queens (now considered the new Chinatown) for a fun educational trip. Academic Technologist Sasha Mathrani and I were the chaperones.

Students explored the cultural products and practices of Chinese New Year to understand the significance of the holiday, especially for the local community. Students first visited Jmart, a big Chinese-style supermarket, where they participated in a “digital scavenger hunt” and explored items people normally purchase for Chinese New Year. Devon Schiff, one of the students who joined the trip, said “I think Jmart was a really interesting part of the trip, a lot of which was very new to me. There was a huge variety of seafood and other meats, which I’d never seen before. There were also many packaged foods and drinks that were new to me as well. It wasn’t a startlingly large building, so I was surprised by how much there was inside. Places like Walmart and Costco in Connecticut are just as big, but have less variety.”

After their Jmart excursion, students helped select decorations for our upcoming St. Luke’s Chinese New Year celebration. During the selection process, students practiced their conversational skills when engaging and bargaining with shopkeepers – a useful real-life cultural experience. Students worked in groups to select and purchase authentic Chinese New Year decorations, such as lanterns, Chinese knots, and window decors with the Fu character on it. The Fu character means “good luck & good blessings.” Students will put up the decorations around the school for our celebration.

Many regions in China enjoy “hot pot” for their Chinese New Year dinner. After shopping at the decoration store, students went to the nearby Chinese restaurant “99 Favor Taste” to experience authentic Chinese hot pot. Hot pot is a Chinese soup that contains a variety of East Asian ingredients and is prepared with a simmering pot of broth at the table. Students used their Mandarin skills to order food and communicate with the waiter. The special hot pot experience helped students experience a sense of “family reunion” in the Mandarin program.

As reflected by Devon Schiff '21, “I’d never been to places like Jmart, the decoration store, or the hot pot restaurant, so it was all new to me. It made me really want to try new foods and explore other cultures.”

View the St. Luke’s Mandarin Students’ Flushing Field Trip photo gallery.