Instructions to Make a Lantern

Note: This article was prepared for a culture event in my son's school.

l  Make the body with the red paper

1. Fold the red paper by half, and fold again, and fold again (three times, along the longer side).

2. Draw a half circle along the folding side. This decides the size of the lantern. The bigger, the better.

3. Cut along the line, we get 4 circles.

l  Make the Spring character with the yellow paper

1. Fold the yellow paper by half, and fold again, and fold again (three times, along the longer side).

2. Draw the following lines along the folding side.

The graph is missing. Need to retry in the future. 

3. Cut along the line, we get 4 characters “春”, which mean Spring in Chinese.

l  Make the decorations with the rest of yellow paper

1. Cut a 0.8cm wide, 15cm long stripe, which is the handle of the lantern.

2. Cut a 2cm wide, 3cm long rectangle, and then cut it into tassels as the following. Remember not to cut to the end for each line.

 

See the graph in the attached Word document.

l  Put them together

1. Glue each character to a circle in the middle.

2. Glue 4 circles together one by one.

3. Glue the handle to the top of the lantern.

4. Glue the tassels to the bottom of the lantern.

Spring Festival

Note: This article was prepared for my son's cultural class. Here is the Word version.

This coming Spring Festival starts on 19th February 2015. Next year is also called Goat year, instead of Horse this year. Spring Festival celebrations traditionally run from Chinese New Year's Eve, the last day of the last month of the Chinese calendar, to the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month.

The Spring Festival is the most important festival for the Chinese people and is when all family members get together, just like Christmas. The Spring Festival falls on the 1st day of the 1st lunar month, often one month later than the Gregorian calendar. It has more than 4,000 years of history, and celebrates family reunion and hopes the advent of spring and flowers blossoming rich with full of colourful activities.

Every family does a thorough house cleaning and purchases enough food, including fish, meat, roasted nuts and seeds, all kinds of candies and fruits, etc, for the festival period. Windows and doors will be decorated with red colour paper-cuts and couplets with popular themes of "good fortune" or "happiness", "wealth", and "longevity." The Chinese character 'Fu' is pasted on the centre of the door and paper-cut pictures adorn windows. Other activities include lighting firecrackers and giving money in red paper envelopes.

 

Often, the evening preceding Chinese New Year's Day is an occasion for Chinese families to gather for the annual reunion dinner. Food during this happy event has its characteristics, which is the representative of Chinese festival food culture. Dumplings and the reunion dinner are indispensable at this time. Cold and hot dishes are all served. Fish is always an important dish then, which expresses people’s hope of having a wealthy year.

The lively atmosphere not only fills every household, but permeates to streets and lanes. A series of activities such as lion dancing, dragon lantern dancing, lantern festivals and temple fairs will be held for days. The Spring Festival then comes to an end when the Lantern Festival is finished.