2024 Hong Bao Campaign Event – Uniting Creativity and Festive Spirit

By Claire C.

According to the AISG website, AISG’s Annual Fund celebrates Chinese New Year with Hong Bao Campaign. Hong Bao means ‘red envelope’ and it is a tradition to place a monetary gift in the envelope and give to friends, family, and relatives as tokens of good wishes. As an educational fundraising campaign, the heart of this special event is to showcase our community’s creative talent and to nurture the culture of ‘giving’.  

 Every member of the AISG community, including students, faculty, teachers etc. contributed their special touch to this event on January 13, 2024, by submitting artwork and taking part in the voting process. For the first time ever, all of the artwork submissions were on show this year at notable sites like IFC and other outstanding spots in Guangzhou. This was a special chance for the community to showcase its ability to the Guangzhou public, and it perfectly conveys one of our strengths as a unified, interconnected community. 

 On January 13th, the Hong Bao campaign began with a gallery walk style set up that highlighted the history of the Hong Bao campaign at AISG, our school director and host of event, Mr. Kevin Baker, shared some information about the school, included an interactive display for the greater Guangzhou community to hang their personal new year wishes on a peach blossom tree, then proceeded through a display of over 200 of the amazing Hong Bao art pieces submitted by down from kindergarten kids to adults AISG community members and concluded in the center area displaying the wide variety of creative artistic methods utilized by our artists. It also had two interactive photo booth areas using art work images from our artists.

Now, quoting some opinions from a competitive event participant, a grade ten student of our community, “My artwork was the cover of the whole exhibition, it was the biggest, I was invited and proud to see my artwork being presented in public.” Kelvin’s Hong Bao design was chosen to be used and printed on AISG Hong Bao products which are now in stores in Ram Shack.  

 Another designer who has been participating this event for five years since sixth grade, a grade ten student now, had positive reaction to this campaign, “The hongbao campaign is a great opportunity to express your creativity and showcase your art skills. It is also an opportunity to spread traditional Chinese culture through modern and or traditional Chinese artwork. I think this activity is necessary — it is a chance for us to learn from each other, as we all have different styles of art. It is a chance for us to express our thoughts and art skills apart from in-school subjects.”  

 Ending with some thoughts and encouraging words from our host of event Mr. Baker, he was glad to see this successful result, “It was a sensational success as our international community had the opportunity to share in and celebrate an important tradition of our host country culture! We demonstrated our commitment to being international cultural ambassadors in Guangzhou! Everyone loved it! I hope it shows the positive feelings of respect and appreciation our international community has for our home in Guangzhou and its rich and valued cultural traditions.”