

Hi! Cho Jess is from China and she came over to tell us about Chinese New Year. We also did crafts to celebrate it. Chinese New Year is coming up on January 23. In the Chinese Lunar Calender it will be the year 4710 (some say it's a different year but around this time). It is the biggest traditional holiday in China and goes on for 15 days. It basically marks the end of winter. In preparation for Chinese New Year, people do things to give them a fresh start such as cleaning the house and getting a haircut. Cho talked to Ivy and said you might want to check the business you go to that are run by Chinese families (such as a restaurant like The Happy Panda) because they might either be closed or they might have extra special things going on to celebrate the new year. The Chinese also have a 12 year cycle of animals that has one that represents each year. This year was the year of the rabbit, but now it's going to be the year of the dragon. Cho helped us make
dragon masks that we found on a Disney Printable website. (For dolls you might want to make one for yourself and scale one down to around 33-35% to match their size). Cobaltcat did an oops by not getting the hole right but we'll fix that. We will later color them too. We also made a couple
red paper lanterns for decoration. We would have made more but our printer ran out of ink. It was a lot of cutting and taping but it was worth it. Since we didn't have enough ink to print more lanterns, we put the
Chinese Zodiac Wheel we printed earlier in the middle with the dragon on the top. They generally put red lanterns up on the 15th day of the New Year. They are red to symbolize good luck- that is why you often see many red things when it comes to Chinese pictures, decorations and clothing. Fireworks are also very common to scare away evil spirits!
Cho also showed us some envelops with money that is given out during the New Year. One envelope had a Koi fish on it to symbolize success. They are so pretty! Cobaltcat remembers reading that they breed koi to look beautiful on the top of their head and body since they are usually put in places where you see them from above.

This would be a great time to read some American Girl Julie books to learn about Chinese New Year and Chinese culture thanks to her friend Ivy Ling such as
Happy New Year Julie!, Good Luck, Ivy!, and
The Puzzle of the Paper Daughter. There are also other good books like
Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat by acclaimed author Amy Tan (she also has a lot of great longer books for adults), watch
Mulan (though not really accurate) and get some Chinese food to eat for take out.
Gung Hay Fat Choi!