THE Philippines has increasingly become an active venue for the celebration of the Chinese Spring Festival, also known as Chinese New Year, with local communities and universities adopting the tradition as a platform for cultural exchange and people-to-people diplomacy, the head of the Confucius Institute at the University of the Philippines said. Zhi Xiaojing said during a media forum organized by the Manila-based think tank Asian Century Philippines Strategic Studies Institute (ACPSSI) over the weekend that the Spring Festival has moved beyond its origins as a purely Chinese ritual and is now being reimagined in the Philippine setting.Zhi said the...