Traditional Chinese Arts & Crafts

China has a long and glorious history in both arts and traditional crafts. These unique cultural skills have become a part of China’s culture for over five-thousand years and have been shared from one generation to the next. These skilled artisans have traveled to Houston to showcase their remarkable talents at Magical Winter Lights. Find out more about these unique talents below: 
 
Finger painting: Instead of a traditional paint brush, these artists create intricate pieces of art utilizing only their fingers and palms. 
 
Trendy cotton candy: Traditionally cotton candy tastefully upgraded to a new level with colorful sugars to create beautiful designs of flowers and animals. 
 
Name painting: These colorful, personalized paintings are created with a specially made bamboo brush where the artist applies a unique technique to create animals and bamboo instead of letters. 
 
Inside painting: A remarkably unique art form where the artist uses a special hook brush to intricately paint the interior of a special container known as a “snuff bottle”. These bottles were used in ancient China during the Qing Dynasty. 
 
Embroidery: One of the oldest cultural arts in China, these skilled artists embroider landscapes, animals, flowers, people, and stories using silk threads. 
 
Sugar painting: With an over 400 year history in China, the artist pours liquid sugar onto marble to create interesting patterns of animals, flowers and more. Once the sugar cools, the fun, sugar sculptures make a delicious treat.
 
 At Magical Winter Lights, you will have the opportunity to meet some of these skilled artisans and take some of their handcrafted treasures home!

Magical Winter Lights Souvenirs

Stop by the Magical Winter Lights souvenir tent near the MWL Performance Stage (Click here for the festival map)! There you will find a variety of panda souvenirs which are native to the region lantern festivals come from.