Return to F.C.C. home page
The following article is reprinted from the December 1995 issue of China Connection, the newsletter for FCC New England. Please notify editor Julie Michaels (617) 929-2809) for permission to reprint.
Do you know why the dragon has a pearl in its mouth? My 3-year-old daughter does. . .and so does her preschool class at the largely white, middle-class suburban daycare center she attends in Dedham.
As last year's Chinese New Year loomed so did my sense of my daughter's being ``alone'' in her identity _ the only Asian in the school. So I timidly asked if I could help shape the curriculum around Chinese New Year. What I expected to be a courtesy one-day event turned into an uproarious, messy, wonderful week, drawing teachers, preschoolers, even the toddlers into its magic. It worked so well, I thought readers might appreciate a primer on how to introduce a similar celebration into their child's school.
Chinese New Year usually comes toward the end of January (a time of doldrums when everyone is ready for something new). This year, however, it starts on the evening of February 18th. Even with older sibs enjoying school vacation, these are difficult days for toddlers and preschoolers because the weather is still too cold for outdoor play. But grey days offer a perfect backdrop for the brilliant red ``Gung-Hey-Fat-Choy'' banners you'll be bringing.
First, talk to the teachers about scheduling a celebration (and be sure to remind them that you'll provide them with all the resources they'll need). Tell them you'll bring in decorations, materials for art projects, books, tapes, and music. And if your center has a kitchen, you might schedule a special lunch in the middle of the week.
Then create a resource box or two. What I did was run around the house putting everything unbreakable and Chinese into a box. This ended up being about 13 trade books and a couple of videotapes appropriate for circle time. They included a key Knopf book on Ancient China (Eyewitness Books Series, Arthur Cotterell), which provided quick-reference pictures and captions for the teachers, grounding them in the basics on dragons, the Chinese New Year zodiac, etc. The trade books included one notable for art projects (At the Beach by Huy Voun Lee, Henry Holt and Company) which demonstrates the relationship between certain Chinese characters and real life and makes a drawing project fun and easy.
I also brought plenty of decorations: two huge ``banners'' of embroidered silk fabric that I had bought in Wuhan (these were hung on the walls), a Beijing butterfly kite, some chops and an ordinary red ink pad for trying them out, and lots of paper goods from Chinatown _ like the Fat Choy banners, the paper dragons with a pearl in their mouth, lucky money envelopes into which we put play money, etc.
I also invested in child size chopsticks and little Chinese plastic bowls for the lunch I made, frozen pork dumplings, and a carton of fortune cookies which we shared with the school. These were probably the biggest hit of all, especially with the toddlers who had the teachers ``read'' their fortune, which somehow always included their name!
I also invested in one of those embroidered silk outfits for my daughter because, well, if you're going to give a party, you oughta dress the part.
Finally, to set the mood, you might try some 1,000-year-old music. I'd recommend bringing in at least one CD of ancient Chinese music which you can get from Central China Book Company, Inc. & Art Gallery, 130 Lincoln Street (some of these are hauntingly beautiful but ask to listen because these run $20 or so).
This said, what's important is not what you bring so much as bringing a variety of materials _ and much of what I brought could have come from the library.
A week before New Year, schedule a 20-minute meeting with all the teachers to review the boxes. They'll immediately sort by what is age-appropriate and begin to plan projects around them. The rest was up to them, and in my case it went swimmingly well. The older kids drew the character for good (mother and child), made a simple version of fried rice, watched Big Bird in China, heard lots of interesting stories, and spent the week creating a ``dragon'' for their big parade.
The only other thing I did was make a lunch for my child's class, giving them small chop sticks and plastic bowls as favors. We used apple juice for ``pretend'' tea. Be ready to find out that your kid is the only one to have tasted soy vinegar and the only one fighting you for the dumplings. (I'd recommend longevity noodles and butter and, of course, clemantines or oranges. Also bring forks so they can actually get some of the food into their mouths). Preschool II kids can have fun learning the Chinese way of eating; Preschool I kids have their own.
And don't be dismayed if you hear little Billy call for his Lion King lunch box _ for some kids, a peanut butter sandwich is too much to give up. Also, I recommend getting the right pronunciation for a phrase or two on tape and bringing it in to the teachers. I was struck by how hungry they were for the input, and how important it was for them to add Chinese words to the event.
This little effort had far-reaching effects _ reverberating in ways I never anticipated. My daughter's group became so fascinated with dragons that they continued with a month's curriculum on them reading books on dragons, making them out of egg cartons and paper-mache and old clock parts, creating a story about them. And my daughter _ rather than being the only Asian in the school became, well, the ONLY REAL ASIAN in the school! an important, Queen-of-the-May distinction. She loved seeing ``her things'' used by her teachers and classmates, an experience which actually made them seem more important. And when it was over, she asked we could teach the kids how to sing Happy Birthday in Chinese.
What I did sounds more coherent in the retelling than it was in the doing. But it was very worth doing. I came to learn what the Chinese know already, that there's ``wisdom'' in the mouth of dragons _ if you only look.
Fat Choy!
The Mouse Bride, a Chinese Folktale, retold by Monica Chang, illustrated by Lesley Liu (Northland Publishing, a Justin Company); The Moon Lady, Amy Tan, illustrated by Gretchen Schields (Macmillan Publishing, NY); Grandfather Tang's Story: A Tale Told with Tangram, by Ann Tompert, illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker, (Julie MacRae Books, London); Roses Sing on New Snow, A Delicious Tale, by Paul Yee, illustrated by Harvey Chan (Macmillan Publishing, NY); Chin Yu Min and the Ginger Cat, by Jennifer Armstrong, illustrated by Mary Grandpre (Crown Publishers, Inc., NY).
1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996, 2008 Rat people are very popular. They have magnetic personalities that draw people to them. They like to invent things and are good artists.
Trawling for items to Boston's Chinatown is easy and fun. The places included here are obvious choices, but good to know about if you have limited time:
Paper goods, children's chopsticks, embroidered outfits _Oriental Gift Design on the corner of Harrison and Beach Streets. It's dusty, musty, and overpriced but, you know, there.
Food (including frozen pork dumplings and fortune cookies by the carton), fat choy banners, plastic bowls _ Mei Tung Oriental Food Super Market on Lincoln Street. If you spend over $25, ask for a calendar, sweetly and insistently. They'll say ``no'' at first but then produce one from the back room. Go early before stocks deplete. United Foods is also nearby. The Hing Shing Pastry Shop on Hudson and Beach Streets was great for simple pastry items and smaller bags of fortune cookies.
Music tapes and CDs, including ancient music - Central China Book Company, Inc. & Art Gallery, 130 Lincoln Street (also has interesting collection of tea pots for adult gift-giving).