Chuang Hua Papercutting 窗花剪紙 Workshop

Join artist Ling Tang for a chuang hua 窗花 papercutting workshop. Learn how to make traditional decorations for your home to celebrate the upcoming Lunar New Year!

Papercutting is a Chinese tradition and popular art form integral to everyday living. During festivals and holidays, households decorate their walls, windows and doors with chuang hua 窗花 or window flowers to welcome luck into the home. In this interactive virtual workshop, you will explore the history and culture of this traditional art through slide shows and live demonstrations and learn how to make your own papercutting patterns such as window flowers and Chinese characters. We also hope you’ll be inspired by the class to create your own unique lucky symbols for the Year of the Ox!

This workshop is free/pay-as-you-wish and the materials, all proceeds will go directly toward supporting our non-profit so we can continue our work of storytelling, arts, and neighborhood engagement.

What you’ll need for the workshop:

red colored paper

scissor

pencil

Please consider purchasing our Tuan Yuan 團圓 Homecoming Box, which includes special red paper for this class, materials and ingredients for our other virtual T!C Lunar New Year events, and additional goodies from our partners. Available through Pearl River Mart for a limited time. www.thinkchinatown.org/tuanyuan-box

Everyone is welcome to join the event. If you’d like to attend but you cannot donate, please send an email to hello@thinkchinatown.org to register at least a day in advance of the event.

Ling Tang is a New York City-based dancer, educator, and arts manager who offers Chinese dance and cultural workshops for K-12 schools and communities. She inherited the paper-cutting tradition from her mother, Hongyi He, who was awarded the title of “Chinese Folk Artist” by UNESCO, and is a 2012 New York Foundation for the Arts Folk/Traditional Arts Fellow.

Think!Chinatown, a 501©(3) non-profit based in Manhattan’s Chinatown, is here to listen, to respond, and to build Chinatown’s capacities as a strong & vibrant immigrant neighborhood of NYC. Our mission is to foster inter-generational community through neighborhood engagement, storytelling & the arts. We believe the process of listening, reflecting & celebrating develops the community cohesion and trust necessary to take on larger neighborhood issues. Our aim is to overcome barriers of community organizing where socio-economic factors, language, and cultural barriers create challenges for immigrant communities’ autonomy to make decisions in their own neighborhood. We’ve built Think!Chinatown to push from within our neighborhood to shape better policies and programs that define our public spaces, to celebrate our cultural heritage, and to innovate how our collective memories are represented.