Cuisine & Culture the Chinese Family Way
Want your home to shine like a star? Why not hang a few ang pow star lanterns around your home to impress your family and friends this coming Chinese New Year 2023! Chinese people love to decorate their homes with red lanterns during the Chinese New Year celebration as they symbolize wealth, fame and prosperity. It’s also to frighten away evil spirits.
Today, I am showing you how to make this ang pow gourd for Chinese New Year. You might be wondering what is the connection of gourd to the Chinese New Year. Gourd in Chinese is called 葫芦(hú lu) and it also sounds like 福禄(fú lù) in Chinese, which means fortune and wealth. Also, this fruit contains a lot of seeds and they symbolise productivity and fertility. Hence gourd is an auspicious item!
Want to send some love to your loved ones? Then come and make this ang pow heart lantern this Chinese New Year to show your appreciation! They can also be used for decorations for weddings! Just use wedding-themed ang pows instead.
Want to impress your family and friends this coming Chinese New Year 2023? Then come and try out this pop-out flower ang pow to decorate your home. This craft only uses 10 ang pows and will look great as a wall decoration. It is so easy to make too.
Love a cube? Then why not come and make this unique cube ang pow lantern decoration for this coming Chinese New Year – The Year of Water Rabbit 2023! This is another easy craft to make and is suitable for older children. This also makes a great opportunity to learn about our Chinese New Year wall decoration and how we celebrate.
Who loves money? Chinese people believe that in the coming New Year, the house needs to fill with good fortune and wealth in order to be wealthy for the rest of the year. Hence they decorate their house full of auspicious items to welcome good fortune, wealth and prosperity! On the first day of the Chinese New Year, the God of Wealth will visit each household to bless the family with wealth. This is why we never sweep the floor for the first few days of the new year. It is bad luck if we sweep the floor, as we will sweep all the wealth away!
This Chinese New Year Candy ang pow lantern is more fanciful and beautiful than a simple plain Chinese lantern. It is like an upgrade to a more complicated looking lantern and it does not require any more materials than a simple lantern, except a pair of scissors. It also looks like a candy wrapper.
Hello everyone! We are almost reaching the end of the Year of the Water Tiger and in 2023, we will welcome the year of the Water Rabbit. The fifteen days of the Chinese New Year start from 22nd January 2023 to 5th February 2023.
You might be wondering why do Chinese people fill their homes full of Chinese New Year decorations. Basically, it’s to fill their house with plenty of good wishes e.g. the whole year brimful with happiness, good health, wealth, prosperity etc. It is equivalent to how western cultures decorate their houses with Christmas decorations and ornaments with wreaths, candles, mistletoe etc. Usually, we hope the new year will bring good health, wealth and prosperity! Hence we love hanging a lot of decorations around the house.
This is my Chinese New Year ang pow fan tutorial. If you would like to learn about other lantern designs I have made previously, do take a look at my Pinterest board for Chinese New Year.
Happy New Year to everyone! I have made this Chinese New Year Pineapple Craft. It is almost the time of the year for Chinese to celebrate our Chinese New Year! This coming lunar year is the Fire Monkey. If you are in Asia or UK Chinatown, you would have probably seen lot of colourful, vibrant decorations.
Over the past year, I have blogged the step-by-step for creating various Chinese crafts e.g. Ang Pow Lantern, Fan, Firecracker etc. I have also written posts on Chinese New Year culture like how we celebrate the festivities in Singapore and UK. Do check them out if you are interested to find out more about Chinese culture.
Yesterday, I made a Hello Kitty Lantern and had a few Ang Bao/Pow left to make a Chinese Coin Lantern. If you would like to find out more on Chinese coins, click the link to direct you to Wikipedia. Some Chinese believe that carrying a Chinese coin in your wallet will also help to ward off evil spirits and bring in money. I am not sure how true it is but I do carry one in my wallet! These Chinese Coin Lanterns are much easier to make compared to other lanterns.
My two sisters-in-law are big fans of Hello Kitty so when I came across some Hello Kitty Ang Bao/Pow when I was last in Singapore, I bought some for them. I bought some for myself too and with these, I decided to make a lantern.
During this month, I am going to write a series of Chinese New Year posts from making lanterns, zodiac, Feng Shui to Chinese culture. This is my first blog post of my Chinese New Year series. Look out for the rest of the posts! Today, I am going to use Ang Pow (red packets) to make a Fish Lantern. So what is an Ang Pow? It is a red envelope/packet that contain a monetary gift which is given during Chinese New Year or special occasions like weddings or birthdays etc. They are called Hong Bao (红包) in Mandarin or Ang Pow/Bao in Singapore Hokkien or Lai See in Cantonese. Click here to read more about it.
I was asked by our Lichfield Mandarin Club to teach our members to make a Chinese New Year mini ang pow lantern. So I decided to blog the step by step instructions. The difficulty rating is 1 out of 5. You can also make more than one lantern and decorate them like how you decorate your Christmas tree.
