Contact:
Jeremy Craig, 404-413-1357
University Relations
ATLANTA – Georgia State University’s Confucius Institute and Asian Studies Center will help present an arts and cultural festival to follow the U.S. Postal Service’s dedication of a new stamp to honor the Lunar New Year and the contributions of Asian-Americans to society.
The dedication ceremony and the fair to honor the Year of the Rabbit will be held at 11 a.m. Jan. 22 at the National Archives and Records Administration building, 5780 Jonesboro Road in Morrow, Ga. The event is free and open to the public.
The stamp is the fourth in the U.S. Postal Service’s “Celebrating Lunar New Year” series. The Confucius Institute and the Asian Studies Center will take part in the Asian-American art and cultural fair as part of the day’s festivities.
“The GSU Confucius Institute is proud to support the launch of the 2011 Lunar New Year stamp, which showcases and important cultural holiday for Chinese Americans and Chinese worldwide,” said Baotong Gu, director of the institute.
GSU’s participation is part of efforts to broaden its outreach to different cultural communities, said Kim Reimann, director of the Asian Studies Center at GSU.
“It is important that we get involved and reach out to the various local communities that make this state so culturally vibrant and diverse,” she said. The lunar new year is observed not only by people of Chinese descent, but also by those of Korean, Vietnamese, Tibetan and Mongolian heritage. On the Chinese calendar, the year of the rabbit corresponds to 2011, 1999, 1987, 1975, 1963, 1951, 1939 and 1927 on the Gregorian calendar used in the West.
GSU’s Confucius Institute, established in October 2010, is one of more than 60 such institutions in the United States and more than 300 worldwide which foster intercultural exchange between China and the world.
GSU’s institute has a primary focus on providing targeted, business-oriented Chinese language and culture instruction for the business community, and also provides other cultural and language offerings.
The Asian Studies Center at GSU, established in 2003, seeks to advance knowledge and raise greater awareness of political, economic, social and cultural issues in Asia and the Asian-American community in Georgia. The center also hosts a concentration in Asian studies for the Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies degree program.
The event is also co-sponsored by the OCA National Center, the Vietnamese Community of Georgia, the National Archives and Records Administration at Atlanta, the Augusta Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, and Georgia state Rep. B.J. Pak, the first Korean-American in the Georgia General Assembly, who was elected in 2010.
For more about the GSU Confucius Institute, visit www.gsu.edu/ci. For more about the Asian Studies Center, visit http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwast/.
Published Jan. 19, 2011