kung hei fat choi

In the corner of my bedroom is a large pine chest.
It was given to us as a wedding present by my mum and dad.
It is my bedside table but it contains lots of my treasures.
Before we turned into an old married couple with 3 kids, j and I were able to travel. Wherever we went I would sniff out all types of craft and textiles.
(I still do but I know I am among friends here and not the only one! As we travelled I collected lots of crafts but mainly textiles as it was easy to carry and post back. I bought this piece in China. Its a household wall hanging made form a cheap red silk. Its not old. It is covered with goldwork and silk embroidery. The scale of the embroidery is impressive and the embroidery is good .

It has a phoenix and a dragon beside a peony. All important symbols in china

I believe the writing at the top says " may you house be filled with jade and gold"

I can't remember the name of the town it was in but the town seemed to specialize in these wall hangings with lots of the shop fronted houses selling them. I don't know if they were made there of somewhere else in china. We did not really leave the tourist trail in China but we did travel independently which meant we got to some places that had seen few tourists. I don't mean we were particularly adventurous but we went to some places that not many tourists and backpackers choose to go to very often.

I found it quite hard to find many traditional decorative crafts as people were focused on earning a living. Its sad to see so much culture has gone. We had expected China to be like Hong Kong. It was very different away form the big cities.

Anyway I could bore for Britain about my travels so i will leave it there but I will try to open up the chest of treasure and show you a few more.