The illustrator Belinda Chen has brought a wonderful authenticity and depth to this book, filling the scenes with symbols of the celebration including festival foods, bamboo, red money envelopes, firecrackers, the Chinese knot as well as two hidden Chinese characters to discover!
Belinda is now based in Yorkshire, but she grew up in a family-run ceramic factory in North Taiwan and speaks so wonderfully of her experience celebrating Lunar New Year:
I grew up in a big family that spoke a mixture of dialogues – Mandarin, Taiwanese and Hakka. Our family love celebrating all kinds of Chinese events and for me, Lunar New Year was always one of the highlights. There are lots of big family gatherings, feasts, receiving red envelopes from relatives, playing card games with cousins, watching colourful dragon dance parade on the street and when the New Year comes the fireworks would go all night long.
Now I live in UK with my family, we have a 6-year-old daughter. We try to recreate the spirit of LNY with family/friends. We make dumplings, write Chinese calligraphy, give each other red envelopes with good wishes for the new year. I am so excited to have had the opportunity to illustrate and share my experience of LNY.
