Special Gifts: Chinese Folk Handicrafts

If you stroll around the Forbidden City, you will notice the presence of many handicraft shops in the neighboring streets. This is one of the pleasures of this area: there is an abundance of small joints carrying folkloric items from the Chinese provinces. Oftentimes, these will make great gift ideas.

Everyone wants to make a quick tourist buck. Beijing shop owners follow this international rule. The advantage of living in Beijing is that you get to see many shops: after a while, you develop a good sense of what’s cool and what’s fake or just overpriced cheap stuff.

Nan Chi Zi street harbors a number of such shops, and I found one there which I think should be told about. Like many others, it offers handmade objects from the Chinese minorities, but also some “purely Beijing” items which are worth a second look.

The good thing about this kind of shops is that though they are not specialized in any region in particular, they bring to Beijing a whiff of what’s so special about the Chinese ethnic minorities.

Amongst the articles offered, I noticed a pendant from Shandong made in a red cotton cord; a “happiness doll” from the province of Hebei; several ethnic minority figurines from the Yunnan province; and small clay sculptures which had been handcrafted in Beijing.

Known as ‘Huan Xi Wa Wa’, happiness dolls are believed to bring good luck and fortune, and for some models to promise life-long bonds to newlyweds.

Chinese families often give each other such small but meaningful gifts, to wish wealth, prosperity, good health, and good fortunes to their families and friends.

Among the other decorative objects offered by the shop, you can’t but notice the braided pendants. Shaped as fish and Chinese zodiac animals, or Chinese characters such as ‘Luck’ and ‘Love’, these red pendants are great handmade gifts.

I noticed a beautiful series of painted clay figurines representing old Chinese people sitting or standing at the doors of the old Beijing homes called ‘courtyards’. You can still see a few of these houses in the hutongs (the old alleyways). They tend to disappear though, to leave room for new construction projects.

The artists even thought of adding the familiar weeds typically found on old roofs in the Beijing Hutongs (the old alleyways), and the worn-out stone stairs leading up to the richer courtyards (traditionally, the higher the flight of stairs, the richer the home owner).

In my book they would make a very cool gift for passionate collectors or for a child interested in small-scale models and mini-dolls.