Chinese Lantern Festival at North Central

Even with all the attention China has been receiving on the world stage, many aspects of its custom and culture remain something of a mystery to those living in the West.

Linda Yang has spent the past half-dozen or so years trying to break down some of those barriers in her role as director of the Xilin Art Center in Naperville.

Toward that end, the group, which works to serve the needs of Asians throughout the region, sponsors two annual festivals to share some of that culture with Naperville-area audiences. One, the Asian Pacific Heritage Festival, focuses on culture and customs from throughout Asia.

Today’s Lantern Festival, however, focuses entirely on the culture of China, from music and dance to Kung Fu.

The sixth annual festival, traditionally celebrated on the 15th day of the first month of the Lunar calendar, opens at 5 p.m. Sunday, April 17, at North Central College’s Pfeiffer Hall, 310 E. Benton Ave.

Tickets are $20 and $10 and participants will get a colorful glimpse of some traditional and modern forms of Chinese culture.

We asked Yang about some of this year’s highlights:

Q. What are two or three of the highlights of this year’s Lantern Festival?

A. We will be celebrating this as the Year of the Rabbit. People born in the Year of the Rabbit are articulate, talented and ambitious. They are virtuous, reserved and have excellent taste. Rabbit people are admired, trusted and are often financially lucky.

In this year’s festival we are introducing the 56 nationalities that make up the population of China. Most of the Chinese people who live here are of the Han nationality, which makes up about 91 percent of the Chinese population. But the remaining 9 percent is made up of people from 55 nationalities, including Tibetan.

Each of those nationalities is blessed with rich culture, performing arts and their own language. There is a map of China in the program book that identifies where the different nationalities and their performances are from.

We’ve also improved the stage background design so it goes better with the performances and helps the audience to better understand the program.

Q. What do you hope visitors learn or come away with this year?

A. We want audiences to better understand the lives of Chinese people in an artistic way. We want them to understand there are so many different forms of performing arts in China. We want them come away affected by the beautiful music, dance, the Chinese Kungfu, vocal performance. We want everyone to enjoy an exotic evening.

Q. Can you tell us a little bit about the Xilin Art Center and why it sponsors the Lantern Festival?

A. The Xilin Art Center promotes Asian performing arts in the Chicago suburbs. It has a twofold mission: providing performing arts education for area students and conducting special events to present Asian and Chinese performing arts to the community.

Xilin Art Center regularly teaches Chinese performing arts classes, including folk dance, music and singing and has been partnering with many Asian performing arts group for nine years. Xilin plays host to two special events annually: the Lantern Festival is a presentation of Chinese performing arts while the Asian Pacific Heritage Festival presents the performing arts from all over the region.

Q. What is the biggest misconception most people have about Chinese culture and how does the festival help dispel it? Over the years since the first festival, do you think area residents have a better understanding of your culture?

A. Yes, we certainly think area residents have a better understanding of our culture than when we started.

Many people had no knowledge at all of the Lantern Festival and its role in the Chinese New Year before we started six years ago. There are three levels of celebrating Chinese New Year.

First there’s the immediate family celebration; then an extended-family celebration; and finally the whole community comes out to the street with a big community-level of celebration (the Lantern Festival).

We use our Lantern Festival to reflect the celebration of the entire community, including all of the Chicago suburbs. Our festival started in 2006 with many games, activities, and finished with performances. Due to the venue issue, we now put more emphasis on the stage performances.

We have many people who come back year and year and bring their friends to participate.

Q. From your personal point of view, what is the best part about the festival? A. It#146;s a whole night of exotic lights, music, beautiful costumes, Chinese Kungfu, folk dance, vocals. It#146;s a treat to just sit back and enjoy it.

If you go

If you go

What: Sixth annual Lantern Festival

Who: Sponsored by Xilin Art Center

When: 5 p.m. today

Where: North Central College’s Pfeiffer Hall, 310 E. Benton Ave., Naperville

Tickets: $20 and $10

Info: xilin.org/documents/ArtCenter