Lunar New Year get-together with Red Envelope making and gifting workshop
- Written byTra Nhu
- Published date 28 February 2024
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Post-Grad Community Ambassador Tra Nhu (MA Illustration, Camberwell College of Arts, 2024) recently hosted a Lunar New Year Celebration for postgraduates to create and design their very own red envelopes to gift to friends and family.
9th February 2024 was the last day of the Year of the Rabbit (or the Year of the Cat) in the lunar calendar. All around the world, and especially in East Asia and Southeast Asia, we celebrate the arrival of the Year of the Dragon.
In this festive season, families and friends give each other red envelopes to wish for health, luck and happiness. The red envelopes (called ‘hongbao’ in Chinese and ‘li xi’ in Vietnamese) are often decorated with celebration motifs, wishes written in calligraphy or illustrations of the horoscope animals. While traditionally there is money gifted in the red envelopes, what is most important is the act of gifting and wishing health and happiness to your beloved ones.
And to celebrate the Year of the Dragon, I had the chance to organise the Red Envelope making and gifting workshop at Chelsea College of Arts!
Before the event, I prepared a range of textured paper printed with a monoprint process, to create paper with a hand-made touch and different hues of red that signifies luck and festivity. With a range of templates I have designed and prepared, we quickly got to crafting and decorating our envelopes
Sitting down with the participants to make the envelopes, I was surprised by all of their different ways to express their wishes creatively. For example, Isaac Spellman (MA Illustration, Camberwell College of Arts) wrote exquisite calligraphy in Cantonese with brushes and silver ink, creating an illuminating effect like fireworks during the New Year. Isaac even kindly gave calligraphy to the other participants!
Meanwhile Cheng Yu (MA Illustration, Camberwell College of Arts) created red envelopes with collages depicting dragons, which were all cute and lovely, making all of us gasp and giggle.
Back home in Vietnam, since I was always chaotically busy with preparation before Lunar New Year, I have never had the chance to create red envelopes by hand, and often buy printed envelopes instead. Asking among the participants, I learnt that for many of them, this was also their first time making hand-made red envelopes. From this workshop, I am motivated to make this workshop a yearly tradition, since hand-made envelopes have their own quirky charms, imbued with love and wishes from us to our family and friends.
I’m thankful to the Post-Grad Community team for organising this Lunar New Year event, so that we can celebrate Lunar New Year together in a festive communal experience, despite being far away from home. And we even got to enjoy some mooncakes, egg rolls and herbal tea together! How wholesome!
And me myself, what did I make? I draw a simple illustration of one happy person catching a rain of gold coins for my red envelopes. While it was definitely not realistic, indeed it gave my friends a good laugh when they received my red envelopes the day after.
Related Links
- Follow Tra on Instagram
- Find out more about Post-Grad Community's 10 Year Anniversary
- Have you heard about our Family Heirloom project?
UAL Post-Grad Community
Established in 2013, Post-Grad Community is an inclusive platform for all UAL postgraduate students to share work, find opportunities and connect with other creatives within the UAL and beyond. Find out more.