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!
Inside your box you will find a bilingual book all about traditional Chinese festivals and culture, an engraved wooden card with the dates for the 2022, a stand for your date cards/cell phone stand festivals and 4 engraved wooden culture cards which you can use as coasters or just as info cards.
You’ll also all the other items feature one of 4 Homeland Ties colour coded stickers so you can see at a glance which items belong to which festival:
Yellow Sticker: Spring Festival
Green Sticker: Dragonboat Festival
Red Sticker: Qi Xi [Chinese Valentines]
Blue Sticker: Mid Autumn Festival
Spring Festival
The items for Chinese New Year are:
- 4 Red Envelopes – see Our Guide on how to give these
- 8 Spring Festival themed cookie cutters. These can be reused every year.
- Traditional door-surrounding decorations [2 long rolls of Chinese characters]. These are usually hung on either side of your front door. These ones say 阿吉大利,家肥屋润 ā jí dà lì jiā féi wū rùn, which translates; ‘[wishing you] good luck and great fortune, may the richness of your home overflow.’
- 16 small felt hanging decorations – perfect to hang on indoor plants or string together. These can be reused every year.
- Family Spring Festival Meal portrait craft – add photos cut-outs of headshots or draw on your family’s features!
- 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
This festival has 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:
- A sewable zongzi decoration and fragrant Chinese mugwort to stuff it in [see the video for how to put this together]. This can be reused every year.
- DIY cardboard ‘Zongzi’ [rice parcels wrapped in leaves] art activity and basket
- 2x 3D Dragonboats that actual floats – this is a favorite with our big AND small kids
- Felt window decoration – often displayed on windows or front doors. This can be reused every year
- DIY family portrait picture
- Cultural card with information on How China Celebrates.
Chinese Valentines
This less-well known festival is based on an ancient myth that was first recorded over 2600 years ago! The message of the Cow-herd and the Weaver Girl is that true love is faithful and hopeful. You can watch the story with an English translation here.
- Large 1yi coin keyring [一亿 yī yì means 100 million and means ‘I wish I could shower you with 100 million gifts/blessings]. It also sounds like 意义 yì yì which means ‘deep meaning’. This can be reused every year.
- Pop up scene of Chinese Valentines day
- Postcard showing the traditional love story of the cows herd and weaver girls [various, yours may be different to one shown]
- 4x color and draw Chinese Valentines cards with envelopes
- Ornate chocolate box that fits 8 chocolate kisses [not included]
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’.
- Large window sticker – this is a simple peel and stick. If you keep the back, you should be able to keep it for next year’s Mid-Autumn celebrations
- Chinese gourd craft to make and decorate. The significance of gourds in Chinese culture is incredibly interesting – this article has a great break down of the uses and meanings of them here and why they’re often used in homes over this festival. It’s definitely worth taking 5 mins to read through it!
- Plastic mould for mooncakes – it also works well with sugar cookies if you don’t have access to the ingredients needed to make traditional mooncakes, just be sure to first grease it well. These can be reused every year.
- Cardboard mooncake basket with air-dry clay you can shape into mooncakes