Our Annual Festival Boxes are PACKED with activities and info to help you celebrate this year’s most important Chinese Festivals. Not sure where to start? The info below should help!
As you open your box, you should see 2 books full of stories behind Chinese festival celebrations, a card with the dates for the 2021 festivals and a beautiful bookmark. We’ve also included magnetic strips that can be added to your dates so you can display it on your fridge if that works for your family!
You’ll also find 4 Homeland Ties bags with color-coded knots:
Red Knot: Chinese New Year
Green Knot: Dragonboat
Blue Knot: Mid-Autumn
Yellow Knot: National Day
Chinese New Year
The items for Chinese New Year are:
- Red Envelopes – see Our Guide
- Hanging decoration that you can design in your own style [some ideas in <== photos here]. Don’t forget to add the red ornate ‘tail’!
- Traditional door-surrounding decorations [2 long and 1 short roll of Chinese characters]. These are usually hang around your front door.
- Assorted Chinese candy and candy bowl
- Cultural card with information on How China Celebrates.
If you’d like to add some traditional foods to your celebrations, here’s a great list with an explanation of their symbolism.
Be sure to follow our Facebook page for regular Chinese New Year updates and info throughout Jan/Feb!
Dragonboat Festival
The festival with over 2000 years of history commemorates the death of the poet Qu Yuan and, like most Chinese festivals, centres around a family meal together. Making Zongzi [glutinous rice dumplings] are a central part of this festival and most of the key ingredients can be found at most Asian stores. Here’s a great recipe if you’re interested in attempting them yourselves! Included in your Dragonboat Festival items are:
- Hanging decorations
- DIY cardboard ‘Zongzi’ [rice parcels wrapped in leaves] art activity, see video!
- 3D Dragonboat and actual floats and is a favorite with our big AND small kids
- Paper dragon
- ‘Zongzi’ shaped [as above ^^, these are rice parcels wrapped in leaves] candy
- Cultural card with information on How China Celebrates.
Mid-Autumn Festival
The story of Chang E and Hou Yi is one of the most famous folklores in China. Mid-Autumn enjoys a meal which is central to celebrations (here’s that list of traditional dishes again!) and round items that represent both the moon and unity. The round mooncakes, round decorations and round bookmark reiterate this idea of family ‘togetherness’ or ‘wholeness’.
- 4x Hanging lantern decorations
- Pi Pa [traditional Chinese pear-shaped traditional lute] to make and decorate
- Plastic mould for mooncakes (also works well with sugar cookies if you don’t have access to the ingredients needed to make traditional mooncakes!)
- Mooncake recipe on reverse of Annual Festival Date card
- Cardboard mooncake basket
National Day
National Day Falls on Oct. 1st every year in China and comes with a 7-day holiday.
- A enamel covered, 1960s style tin cup with the saying ‘The world is wide. I want to go see it all’.
- Chinese flag bunting
- 3x Love China pins
- 3D kids panorama activity with Chinese scene
- Cultural card with information on How China Celebrates.