Hands-on China: dumpling classes, calligraphy, tea, tai chi, seal carving and the experiences families remember

Ask families what they remember a year after a China trip and it is rarely the Forbidden City. It is the afternoon the children folded dumplings with a grandmother in a courtyard kitchen, the calligraphy teacher who wrote their names, the seal carver who finished their stamp while they waited. The sights explain China; the hands-on hours let you touch it. This guide lists the experiences we book most, who they suit, and how long they take.

Cooking and dumpling classes

The most popular by a distance. A good class in Shanghai or Beijing is two to three hours: a market walk with the teacher to buy ingredients (the part adults love), then a kitchen where you fold xiaolongbao or jiaozi, stir-fry a Shanghainese dish or two, and eat the result. Classes run in professional cooking schools with English-speaking chefs, and in family homes in the hutongs and the lanes, which are smaller, warmer and better for children. Ages from about six; the folding is the children’s part and the knife work the adults’. In Beijing the dish is jiaozi and often Peking-style noodles; in Shanghai it is xiaolongbao and shengjian; in Chengdu, if you go, it is mapo tofu and kung pao.

Calligraphy

An hour or two with a calligraphy teacher, usually in a studio or a tea house: how to hold the brush, the eight basic strokes, a character or two, and your name rendered in Chinese to take home. It is meditative, surprisingly physical, and suits adults and patient children from about eight. Teachers in Shanghai’s Concession and Beijing’s hutongs take small groups; a guide finds the one whose English is good enough to explain why a stroke is wrong. Pair it with the water calligraphers in the parks (the parks guide) to see the art at scale.

Tea

A tasting session in a tea house, with a teacher who brews five or six teas gongfu-style and explains the families, is the hour in which most guests “get” China; the tea guide covers it. In Hangzhou the version is a morning in a Longjing village, picking in spring and roasting with the farmer. For children it is the least engaging of the list; for adults, often the most.

Tai chi

A private session in a park at seven with a teacher, an hour of the basic form, is the best possible start to a day and sits naturally before the sights. The teachers who work with visitors speak some English and are used to stiff Australians; nobody has ever been bad enough to spoil it. Group drop-ins in the parks are free and welcoming, as the parks guide describes.

Seal carving

A personal seal (a chop) with your name in Chinese, carved in stone while you wait, from a carver at Yu Garden, Tianzifang, Liulichang in Beijing or Pingjiang Road in Suzhou. The carver chooses characters that sound like your name and mean something good, and explains both; the seal, the red ink paste and the little box are the best gift in China for under the price of a dinner. Children choose the stone and watch the carving; thirty to sixty minutes.

Paper cutting, knots, kites and lanterns

Short workshops, an hour each, in craft studios and museums: paper cutting (window flowers for New Year), Chinese knotting (the red cords), kite painting (and flying it on the Bund or in the Temple of Heaven park), and lantern making before the Lantern Festival. All suit children from five; the Suzhou Museum, the Shanghai Museum East’s children’s gallery and the craft shops of the water towns run them.

Tailoring: a qipao or a suit in 48 hours

The tailors of Shanghai’s Concession and the South Bund Fabric Market will make a qipao (cheongsam) or a man’s suit to measure in two or three days with one fitting; good ones are excellent and priced well below Australian bespoke, poor ones are poor, and a guide knows the difference. Order on day one, fit on day three, collect on day four. A silk qipao for a teenage daughter is a favourite; the South Bund market is also where to have a coat copied.

Silk and embroidery in Suzhou

The Suzhou Silk Museum shows the cocoons, the reeling and the looms; the city’s embroidery studios let you watch, and try, the double-sided needlework that takes a year per piece. An hour in the Suzhou day for anyone who sews.

Beijing: opera make-up, kung fu, hutong life

In Beijing, the theatres that stage Peking opera for visitors (the Liyuan Theatre) let children watch the performers paint their faces before the show; the Red Theatre’s kung fu show is a loud, athletic evening that teenagers rate; a hutong family visit, with lunch cooked in a courtyard kitchen and a tour of the house, is arranged by guides and is the closest a visitor gets to a Beijing home; and rickshaw rides through the lanes are a tourist cliché that children still love. Add mahjong, which any guide can teach in a tea house in an hour and which becomes the family game for the rest of the trip.

Shows

The ERA acrobatics show in Shanghai and the kung fu show in Beijing are the two we recommend without hesitation for families; Sichuan opera’s face-changing in Chengdu if you go that far; and the big outdoor spectaculars at Huaqing in Xi’an and in Hangzhou (Impression West Lake) for those who like scale. The nights guide has the Shanghai details.

Choosing, and how much time

Two or three of these across a week is right; one a day turns the trip into a timetable. On our tours the dumpling class, the tea session and the park morning are built in; the rest are added to day guide bookings on request, with the teacher, the studio and the timing chosen for the ages in the group. A rainy forecast, as the rainy day guide says, is the moment to bring two of them forward.