\n
The Great Neck Library was teeming with dazzling performances and vibrant crafts Saturday morning as part of its Lunar New Year celebration.<\/p>\n
Li Liu, a Chinese acrobat, awed a crowd of about 100 people in the community room of the library, spinning plates, performing one-handed handstands and twirling brightly-colored ribbons to a musical backdrop.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, I like seeing the young people have fun,\u201d said Liu.<\/p>\n
Liu, who is 59 and from Beijing, took breaks from the balancing acts to teach Chinese words and culture to event attendees \u2014 part of the library\u2019s daylong event celebrating the Lunar New Year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI share the Chinese culture,\u201d said Liu, who has been in the United States for more than two decades. \u201cYou guys share some culture for me, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lunar New Year, which falls on Feb. 17, is celebrated by a host of countries in Asia, including China, Japan and Korea. The library\u2019s event included a scavenger hunt,\u00a0arts and crafts stations, a book reading and a musical performance highlighting Chinese music.<\/p>\n
Lawrence Yi, 8, of Great Neck, was one of the volunteers for the acrobatic performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was pretty fun. I\u2019ve seen people who have done it, and it takes a lot of practice,\u201d he said. \u201cBut, it was a little easier than I thought.\u201d<\/p>\n
His sister, Maddie Yi, 6, said the ribbon performance \u201cwas my favorite dance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their dad, Jack Yi, said he brought his family \u201cto see more of our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because his children were born in the United States, Yi said he wants to expose them to cultural elements they don\u2019t get to normally see or experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s very important, especially since the Chinese community is growing so much in Great Neck,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Adam Hinz, the \u00a0<\/span>Gre\u00a0<\/span>at Neck Library\u2019s system program coordinator, said Saturday\u2019s performances and activities are designed to promote inclusivity.<\/p>\n\u201cOur biggest hope \u2026 is that the community sees the library as a place for everybody,\u201d Hinz said.<\/p>\n
Spread out across multiple tables, the Alliance of Youth Leaders in the United States, a national nonprofit group with a local Great Neck branch with over 300 volunteers, taught children how to paint gold designs on red paper and make two-dimensional art traditionally used as decoration for the Lunar New Year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s important for everybody to merge together,\u201d said Susan Zheng, an adviser for the local branch. \u201cI think it\u2019s important for everybody to know other cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kevin George, of Great Neck, who was with his family, including his two young children, said he came to the library not initially aware of the Lunar New Year celebration.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a nice surprise,\u201d George said. \u201cIt\u2019s good to know about different cultures and their traditions, heritage. It makes life more interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n
The library event included a reading with author Aram Kim, who was raised in South Korea, and a performance by\u00a0Zhou Yi and\u00a0Yimin Miao, award-winning musicians from the\u00a0Ba Ban Chinese Music Society.<\/p>\n
Levittown resident Cristina Lam\u00a0came to the Lunar New Year celebration with her husband, who is part Chinese, and two sons, ages 4 and 6.<\/p>\n
She said she hopes exposing her children to part of their heritage will show them \u201cthat there\u2019s a whole big world out there\u201d and \u201cthat there\u2019s more to learn about themselves and other people that are different.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.newsday.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Great Neck Library was teeming with dazzling performances and vibrant crafts Saturday morning as part of its Lunar New Year celebration. Li Liu, a Chinese acrobat, awed a crowd of about 100 people in the community room of the library, spinning plates, performing one-handed handstands and twirling brightly-colored ribbons to a musical backdrop. \u201cFor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2260407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[437810,21866,437811,21802],"class_list":["post-2260406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-asian-history","tag-education","tag-nassau","tag-real-estate"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Lunar-New-Year-celebrated-with-acrobatics-crafts-music.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2260406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2260408,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260406\/revisions\/2260408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2260407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2260406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2260406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2260406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}