Cuisine & Culture the Chinese Family Way
Ong lai! Ong lai! Did you know that the pineapple is known as ong lai in the Hokkien dialect? It also means prosperity comes/brings wealth! This is why we Chinese love to display pineapple ornaments throughout the house/workplace in the hope that it will bring their family/business lots of good fortune for the Chinese New Year.
Many years back, I wrote a blog post about Chinese New Year wall decoration and showcased a few examples. This coming Year of Water Rabbit 2023, instead of buying ready-made wall decorations, why not make your very own ang pow wreath? I will show you the step-by-step with photo illustrations and hope you like it.
This is a Chinese New Year lotus ang pow lantern. Have you made yours yet? If you have not, why not check out my Chinese New Year craft section for more inspiration? Today we are making this lotus ang pow lantern to decorate your home. This lantern is quite big (approximately 23 – 26 cm by 26 cm) and heavy as I have used 30 ang pows to make it.
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 a very simple Chinese New Year Ang Pow Fish tutorial, especially suitable for younger children. For this coming New Year celebration, I am going to host the craft lesson for my Chinese club and to make it easy, I am going to teach my students this simple ang pow fish. If you don’t have square ang pow, then you can use any ang pow packets and cut them into a square shape.
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.
It is the time of the year to start making some Chinese New Year crafts – Ang Pow Monkey Craft! This year, the first day of Chinese New Year falls on the 8th February 2016 and it will last for 15 days. Over the past few years, I had made quite a few ang pow lanterns, taught the children simple ways to learn the Chinese zodiac, made various paper cuttings and also made a 3D Chinese “Spring” character. Click on the title Chinese Culture to look at my previous Chinese New Year crafts. Or pop over to my Pinterest’s Chinese New Year craft board below!
This coming year is the Year of the Monkey. Hopefully during these next few weeks, I will be sharing different types of monkey crafts or maybe Chinese New Year foods with you!
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.
In these coming months, I will be partnering with a few major retailers for the National Stationery Week (27 April – 3 May 2015) to get Britain writing, and to focus on the importance of handwriting.
This week I have received this staple free stapler from KOKUYO, Japan’s leading stationery brand. Harinacs staple free stapler holds sheets of paper without using metal staples (maximum of 6 sheet of paper at a weight of 80 gsm). This innovative and quirky stapler comes in three different designs and in a range of fun colours; including pink, blue, green, brown, white and black. They are available to buy from www.stonegift.com. So I am using Harinacs staple to make a stapleless Chinese New Year lantern.
This is my Chinese New Year ang pow flower lantern tutorial. If you would like to learn about other lantern designs I had made previously, do take a look at my Pinterest board for Chinese New Year.
I had mentioned in my previous blog post that I would be sharing Chinese New Year’s craft ideas and different types of sheep crafts with you. Today, I am sharing eight different types of activities that you can do with your children.
I always wanted my children to learn and understand our Chinese culture. But living in the UK, it is quite hard to expose my children to our Chinese culture. So I decided to bring it closer to them by showing them the different types of crafts I made when I was young and let them taste different types of New Year’s food like Nian Gao and other types of goodies. One day I will bring them to Singapore Chinatown for Chinese New Year.
It is the time of the year to start making some Chinese New Year crafts! This year, the first day of Chinese New Year falls on the 19 February 2015 and it will last for 15 days. Last year, I had made quite a few Ang Pow lanterns, taught the children simple ways to learn the Chinese zodiac, did various paper cuttings and also made a 3D Chinese “Spring” character. Click on the title Chinese Culture to look at my previous Chinese New Year crafts.
This coming year is the year of the Sheep. During these next few weeks, I will be sharing different types of sheep crafts with you!
Today, I am showing you how to make a Chinese character sheep 羊 using ang pow (red packet). This is a very simple way to decorate your wall and teach your children Chinese words.
