Produced by Blue Hill Pyrotechnics, a leading Maine fireworks firm, the dazzling display over the college’s Lake Andrews begins at 7 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 24. All are welcome to watch the fireworks from the Olin Arts Center terrace, 75 Russell St., at no charge.

Actually commencing on Jan. 22 with the new moon, this Lunar New Year begins the Year of the Monkey. Celebrated in a number of Asian cultures, Lunar New Year resembles the American traditions of Thanksgiving and Christmas — times for family, feelings of joy and appreciation of the blessings of the past year. Throughout the celebration’s 15 days, families visit and offer gifts. Religious ceremonies are dedicated to heaven and earth, to the gods of the household and to family ancestors. Fireworks are traditionally part of the celebration.

Other Asia Week events: At 8 p.m. the same evening in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, the Bates College Concert Series offers The Zheng: A Concert of Classical Chinese Music, featuring Tian Qing, a musicologist and multi-instrumentalist, and Zhang Shan, a virtuoso on the zither-like stringed instrument called the zheng. The musicians offer a free pre-concert lecture in the concert hall at 4 p.m. Concert admission is $8 for the general public and $5 for seniors and students. For reservations and concert series information, call 207-786-6135.

Supported by the Freeman Foundation of New York City and Stowe, Vt., Asia Week at Bates begins at 5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 16, with a lecture and opening reception for the Bates College Museum of Art exhibition Documenting China: Contemporary Photography and Social Change. Showcasing the work of seven Chinese photographers, this nationally significant exhibition examines the impacts of urbanization and industrialization in that rapidly modernizing land.

Also starting Jan. 16 are exhibitions of student photographs of China in the Chase Hall Gallery, Campus Avenue, and the Ronj, Bates’ student-run coffeehouse, 32 Frye St. The images come from a body of work by the two dozen students who spent the 2003 Bates College Fall Semester in Nanjing.

“The Eye: The 2004 Bates College Festival of Contemporary Asian Cinema” offers seven films to be shown between 6 and 10 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 20, through Friday, Jan. 23. The first screening takes place in the Benjamin Mays Center, Russell Street, and the remainder in Olin Arts Center, Room 104.

Finally, in the Mays Center at 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 26, Cleveland-based designer David Slawson offers the slide lecture Creating Japanese Gardens Inspired by Native Scenery. For information call 207-786-6255.

The series presents Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove and his band at 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 17, in the Bates College Chapel, College Street. Italian vocalist Roberta Gambarini, who placed third in the 1998 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocal Competition within weeks of her arrival in the United States, opens for Hargrove.

A week later, the series ends its season with a program of classical Chinese music. Multi-instrumentalist Tian Qing and Zhang Shan, a virtuoso on the stringed zheng, perform at 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 24, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Admission for each concert is $8 for the general public, $5 for students and seniors. For reservations and information about the concert series, call 207-786-6135.

Roy Hargrove rides to Bates on a wave of excitement about his latest recording, the street-smart Hard Groove (Verve). Still in his early 30s, this musician inspired by saxman David “Fathead” Newman and discovered by Wynton Marsalis is known as one of the most versatile and hard-working players in jazz.

Recorded with The RH Factor and released in May, Hard Groove is a daring collaboration with such hip-hop and R&B names as D’Angelo, Erykah Badu and Q-Tip. Hargrove’s nine albums as leader include the Grammy-winning Afro-Cuban landmark Habana, and he shared another Grammy with Michael Brecker and Herbie Hancock for 2002′s Directions in Music.

Opening for Hargrove is Gambarini, a native of Italy who has been compared to Ella Fitzgerald and Carmen McCrae. Born into a jazz-loving family in Turin, Gambarini was performing in clubs around northern Italy by age 17. In 1984, she took third place in a national jazz broadcast competition, which led to performances at festivals throughout Italy.

In 1998, Gambarini came to the United States on a scholarship from the New England Conservatory in Boston. She has appeared at the Schomburg Center with the Jazz Legacy Ensemble and in a major Kennedy Center tribute to Thelonius Monk.

A week after Hargrove and Gambarini, Bates presents Tian and Zhang in The Zheng: A Concert of Classical Chinese Music. This program explores a diversity of classical forms, from courtly music to melodies from the autonomous Central Asian region of Uighur.

One of China’s foremost music scholars, Tian is a leading authority on Buddhist music. A master of classical Chinese instruments, he has lectured and performed extensively in Asia and Europe. The Bates concert marks his first U.S. visit.

Zhang is an emerging master of the zheng. This instrument, dating back 2,500 years, resembles a zither, with more than 20 strings on an unfretted wooden body — yet unlike the zither, its player can obtain a haunting vocality by bending the pitch of the plucked strings. A winner of numerous awards, Zhang has performed often as a soloist since 1989 and is known for her precise but bold interpretations of classical material.