Chinese New Year: Lay see (laisee)

The lay see (lucky money tucked in red envelopes) is a part of the celebration. As part of our pageant we found it fun to distribute lay see to the other children in our school. We put a shiny penny in each red envelope, but it is just as much fun to give each student a small red card with some calligraphy , Chinese writing, on it. Following is a description of how to make and decorate the envelopes or red cards.

Calligraphy

Calligraphy is the art of fine handwriting. Chinese calligraphy is very beautiful.

heaven earth emperor parent teacher

Calligraphy and bamboo by Mrs. Ting

The Chinese use stylized versions of pictures to tell the reader the meaning and feeling of what is written. In the United States we use an alphabet to represent sounds of words. For instance, "r" is the first sound of rain or rat. The "r" is followed by other letters of the alphabet and together they spell the words. In Chinese, each of these words would has one symbol, called a character, that long ago was a picture.

These symbols started out as pictographs, a simplified picture ("picto") that looked very like the thing it was showing. It got further simplified, made easier, and became an ideogram , a drawing of an idea! They are called characters. With an ideogram we no longer see the picture. The lines stand for an idea. A lovely character combines the characters for mother and child and stands for the idea of "good." People who study Chinese calligraphy can show how the character first started as a picture and how it changed to a pictogram representing an idea.

China is a very large country with over one billion people. They speak many different languages, but they can share their ideas through the ideogram/characters because the ideograms are about ideas. Ideograms show an idea, not just a word.

Many countries use ideograms to write their stories and thoughts. The Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese also use some ideograms and can share their ideas even though they speak very different languages.

In China, high school students learn about 1,000 characters or ideograms. College students learn about 2,000; the very educated use at least 130,000 characters and learn how to write them beautifully. There may be as many as 300,000 Chinese characters.

Check out more about calligraphy at:

http://library.thinkquest.org/3614/Default.htm Click on Drawing to find an excellent lesson on how to do Chinese calligraphy!!

Now it is your turn to try creating an ideogram.

Creating an Ideogram

First start by making your own

• drawing, then simplify it to make a
• pictograph and then simplify the pictograph to make an
• ideogram or character

Here is our example. We thought that nose, ears, tail and four legs were important to keep for our ideogram.

Drawing of a dog, pictograph of a dog, our ideogram of a dog

Get a sheet of paper, a felt tip pen and try making your own ideogram. Chose a thing you would like to make a character for.

Decorating Lay See

Now make some real Chinese characters!

You'll need a sheet of white paper, a black felt tip marker, and finally red envelops to decorate.

1. Using white paper and the black felt tip marker, try making these signs. Make the sign by following the numbers and arrows. Be certain to have your pen go in the direction of the arrow. Make at least two or three samples of each sign.
   

   	Peace
   	Friendship
   	Good Luck
   	Happiness

2. When you can make the characters, ask your teacher for squares of red paper (or red envelops if you will have pennies to share with the other students). Write a Chinese sign and then print the word at the bottom in our English alphabet. Here is our example.
   We can't write the signs as beautifully as the samples, but we are practicing!
3. Save your red squares or envelopes so you can hand them out as you do your lion parade.

Next, you should get ready for your lion dance.

      

Copyright © 2002 by Arizona State University and the Arizona Board of Regents.