Last week we spent a whole week doing fabulous Chinese New Year Crafts. We made lanterns, masks, ancient coins, dragons, hats, rice, wontons and more and had a huge amount of fun doing it. Chinese New Year celebrations go on to the 15th of February, but today our closest celebrations were in a town called Woking, and Ameli came in at the crack of dawn, ready to set off for the Chinese Parade. (I randomly realise now, sitting here, that I didn’t get a single picture of her in her Chinese dress!)
Ameli was enthralled by the beautiful ‘princesses’, the ‘flowery ladies’ and the ‘bright children’. I’m so glad that we followed our Chinese New Year ‘crafts’ with a display of the real thing. I feel it really cemented her understanding of this foreign culture, which is so different to ours – a stark contrast to say, Australian, which isn’t all that different.
I must confess too, that sitting there watching men, women and children engaged in a beautiful culture display of their heritage, made me slightly sad that we don’t come from such a lineage. It was beautiful.
*Here’s a audio example of how to say Gong Xi Fa Cai or Gong Hey Fat Choy