Chinese Club provides enjoyment
By Angel Zheng
Chinese Club is a club that promotes students to experience Chinese culture and traditions. This club organizes in-school activities that relate to China (such as Chinese New Year) and has been around for more than 8 years. These activities include ping-pong, badminton, Chinese movies, etc. Chinese Club works with other clubs as well, such as Asian Student Association Club. In addition, a Chinese Club T-shirt is created each year for its members! Every two weeks, the club has a meeting on Thursday, which takes place in portable 5 (Ms. Sun’s classroom). The club leaders are Timothy Du and Yvonne Tsao. One of the club leaders, Tsao, revealed her intentions of joining the club. “I wanted to embrace my culture, stated Tsao, “and I was also taking Chinese class.”
On Thursday 12, 2019, Chinese Club is holding a meeting. This meeting starts with a very short presentation of the club’s agenda for the day. The first thing to do is have a club shirt discussion, in which Tsao presented the current shirt idea to the club members. The current Chinese Club shirt idea was a black T-shirt with the words “Chinese Club,” then under that the words “Timber Creek,” both located on the upper right hand side of the shirt in white. On the back of the shirt, there is a white Chinese dragon pasted in the center. “I think the dragon symbolizes the strength of the people of China,” said Du.
After the shirt discussion, the ping-pong table is brought out to the front of the classroom while snacks and drinks are presented. The snacks and drinks include small bags of chips, French pastries called Palmiers, and pink lemonade. In addition, paper plates, plastic cups, and paper towels are placed on the table in case anyone needed them. While some club members helped themselves to the refreshments, others talked to each other about a variety of topics. This is the perfect environment for anyone who just wants to relax and have fun.
Ping-pong (table tennis) is a traditional Chinese game played for fun, or for competition. It consists of a rectangular ping-pong table, two paddles, and a bouncy ping-pong ball. One player hits the ball across the table with a paddle, and the person facing the player on the other side of the table uses a paddle to hit the ball back. Some club members participated in the game. At one point, there was a two-on-two match in which two ping-pong balls were used instead of one!
The martial arts performance, led by Travis Duong, was supposed to be after ping-pong; however, it was skipped due to the rain outside. Soon, the ping-pong table was put away, and the snacks were stored in the classroom’s mini-fridge. Around 3:20, Chinese Club wrapped up and its members started to leave. The rain was not heavy when everyone walked outside. Overall, the Chinese Club meeting was fun, relaxing, and pleasant for everybody.
Take that. Travis Duong strikes an orange ping-pong ball across the table to his opponents, Cameron Yao and Gustavo Alvarez, while Jason Fernandez watches the action. “Ping-pong is definitely one of the best parts of Chinese Club,” remarked Yao. Photo donated.