We invite you to welcome the Year of the Dragon with a vibrant festival heralding new beginnings and the coming of spring. Join us as we continue our celebrations for the 20th anniversary of Yin Yu Tang: A Chinese Home at PEM! Enjoy performances, storytelling and art making and explore Yin Yu Tang.

Yin Yu Tang — translated as “Hall of Plentiful Shelter” — was home to the Huang family for nearly two hundred years. For the past 20 years, Yin Yu Tang has been a gateway into understanding the art and culture of generations of families living and working in rural Southeastern China. Since 2003, more than 850,000 people have visited this unique, immersive environment at PEM.

Lunar New Year is celebrated in many Asian countries, including China, Vietnam, Korea, Singapore and Malaysia. While some traditions are shared across countries, others are unique to one region, community or national cultural identity. Our programming this year focuses on Chinese cultural traditions.

Self-Guided Tours | Yin Yu Tang: A Chinese Home

10:15 am–4:15 pm, Every 30 minutes

Reservations required. Same-day tickets available at the Admissions and Information Desks.

Storytelling | Chinese Folktales with Limin Mo

10:30–11 am

East India Marine Hall

Join us for storytelling with an award-winning writer and artist who brings Chinese tales to life. Recommended for children 12 and under.

Art Making | Dragon Paper Puppets

11 am–12 pm

East India Marine Hall

Join Limin Mo to make a paper puppet and create your own piece of the festival! Suitable for all ages.

Dance Performance | Gund Kwok: Asian Women’s Lion and Dragon Dance Troupe

11:30 am–12:30 pm

Main Atrium

Experience the energy and grace of Gund Kwok, the first all-Asian women’s Lion and Dragon Dance troupe in the U.S.

Drop-In Art Making | Decorating Red Envelopes

1–3 pm

Create Space Studios

Join us in a hands-on activity to decorate your own red envelope, a symbol of luck and prosperity in Chinese culture. Suitable for all ages.

Live Music | Chinese Traditional Music Club

1:30–2:05 pm

Morse Auditorium

Enjoy the mesmerizing fusion of traditional and modern Chinese music presented by performers from the Chinese Traditional Music Club at Berklee College of Music.

Puppetry Workshop | Chinese Shadow Puppets

2:30–3:30 pm

Crosby Forbes Gallery

Same-day tickets required. Tickets at the Admissions and Information desks.

Explore the captivating world of Chinese Shadow Puppetry with Yolanda Yuanlu Peng, a versatile theater designer straddling set, projection, puppet design, and puppeteering.

About the Artists:

Limin Mo is an award-winning writer and acclaimed artist and storyteller. She creates performance art incorporating painting, singing and writing into video productions. Mo was born in Shanghai and made her way to the U.S. in the 1960s. For four decades, she has lived and worked in Cambridge, MA, where she raised three children. She previously worked with Peter Schuman's Bread and Puppet Theater and studied with Reality Theatre-Gurdinieze, Japanese Kyogen Players and Joan Halifax. She holds an MA in Theater and Education from Goddard College and an MFA from Emerson College in Creative Writing. She is also a passionate gardener and an accomplished chef.

Gund Kwok was founded in February 1998 as the first all-Asian women's Lion and Dragon Dance troupe in the United States. The troupe, whose name means “heroine” in Chinese, empowers Asian and Asian American women by giving them an opportunity to express their creativity, power and strength through performing the lion and dragon dances.

The Chinese Traditional Music Club seeks to introduce Chinese traditional music and Chinese culture to the diverse community at Berklee College of Music. They provide opportunities for musicians, arrangers and songwriters who want to learn, create and perform Chinese traditional music. The club serves as a resource to those who are passionate about composing and arranging using Chinese instruments in any style.

Yolanda Yuanlu Peng is a recent graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her interest and practice focus on the intervention of art, design, curation and performance in public domain and urban contexts. Her curatorial and educational experience ranges from design agency work to projects with museums and art institutions, including Urbanus Shenzhen, Citylinx, Beijing International Design Week, the Chengdu Biennale and the A4 Artist in Residence International Exchange Program. Currently, she is the Director of Visual Arts and Media at Vermilion Theater and designs sets, projections and puppets.

Enjoy videos from our Yin Yu Tang interpretive theater that explore various aspects of Chinese culture, including Lunar New Year.

Yin Yu Tang: A Chinese House

Experience the journey of this 200-year old Chinese house as it is dismantled in its village, shipped to America and re-erected at the Peabody Essex Museum. The significance of homes and the families they shelter in Chinese culture is presented through vivid images of construction techniques and ceremonies and through interviews with Huang family members and participants in the Yin Yu Tang project.

Runtime: 17 minutes, 20 seconds

Guo Nian: Passage into a New Year

Lunar New Year festivities in China often last two weeks and entail days of preparation. This film documents contemporary celebrations in the Huizhou region (the original home of Yin Yu Tang) and records reminiscences of New Years past.

Runtime: 16 minutes, 38 seconds

Guomen: A Village Wedding

A young woman and her family prepare for her wedding in a village near Huang Cun, the original home of Yin Yu Tang. In the groom's household, they are readying the new couple's bedroom and a grand wedding feast. The bride, her father, and others describe the traditional rituals and emotional stress, while elders – some of them former residents of Yin Yu Tang – recall their own weddings.

Runtime: 16 minutes, 19 seconds

Date: February 10, 2024

Time: 10 am-4 pm

Location: Peabody Essex Museum

East India Square, 161 Essex Street,  Salem, MA 01970

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