29 July 2018 – Celebrating Teochew culture, ArtStories was invited by Ci Yuan CC to conduct two traditional Teochew art and craft activity for the public.

After some research as to what might be suitable for an open crowd engagement, we had decided on Mask Painting & Paper Cutting on Paper Lantern craft.

The main traditional art form of Teochew culture is indeed the Chinese Opera. This form of opera involves music, singing, martial arts, acrobatics and acting. There is always a storyline with characters in lavishly hand-embroidery costumes and heavy made up faces. Their faces would be painted with various colours and patterns to identity the character’s personalities. A strong character would have a bolder and stronger colour whereas a feminine character will have less definition.

We decided to share with the public some basic character face patterns on the paper masks provided.

There is another booth with paper cutting and paper lanterns. The traditional craft of lantern painting is an ancient craft where painted lanterns used to be hung in most Teochew homes from the early 20th century. We were unable to emulate the painting of lanterns as it is a tedious and meticulous process for an public workshop. We decided to teach paper cutting instead and attaching the various paper cut designs onto the lantern with glue after. To learn more about traditional Teochew lantern painting, please visit this youtube documentary ‘The Tale of a Lantern Painter’ https://youtu.be/mu5XWPw8gRk