The‘Mali Mali Palace’touring display is an educational showcase designed to engage the participation of both teachers and students on school campuses in discovering fascinating stories and fun facts about an imperial palace, utilising a mix of graphics and three-dimensional displays, interactive games, creative activities and electronic media. Through this programme, our Education Team seeks to bring together young learners from various academic subjects, who are encouraged to pursue extended learning and creative activities so that they can bring their experiences back home and to their classrooms. What’s more, docent-led tours and workshops can be arranged to cater to the needs of different schools and organisations.
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With over six centuries of history and splendour, the Forbidden Palace is the world’s most complete and largest palace complex. You’re cordially invited to explore this forest-like architectural marvel, filled with fascinating tales of royalties, blessings and well wishes embedded in its structures, and take home all the beautiful memories. Let’s chime in and say mali-mali-home (that is ‘Open sesame’ to English speakers), the magical phrase that opens the door to a palace of hidden treasures! |
The educational showcase consists of three parts:
Craftsmen in ancient China turned to nature for inspiration and employed a variety of dexterous techniques in the construction of the magnificent palace. Indeed, every brick and stone that constitutes the palatial complex has a story to tell.
Just like trees that take years to grow to maturity, so do children who become the pillars of society through a lifelong course of diligent learning.
As the residence of the emperor, the Forbidden City was designed like a big tree with the emperor as the trunk and members of the royal family and royal consorts the branches and leaves. The bigger and stronger the trunk, the more exuberantly the branches and leaves grew. It’s important that members of the inner and outer courts complemented and cooperated with each other to achieve the peace and stability that enabled the country to prosper.
The red carpet has been rolled out for you to meet the emperor, the royal consorts, the civil and military officials and other members of the imperial court!
In China, blessings are everywhere. Blessings can be worn as clothes, cupped in your palms, written out and sent as gifts – or even brought back home. With boundless imagination and infinite associations, people weave creatures and creations of the world into messages of well wishes and integrate them into the fabric of day-to-day life.
Have you found the many beautiful blessings in your life?
A Chronicle of Activities
The tutors are explaining the display of “Writing” to the students in Fengming Primary School. The display depicts the similarity between Chinese architecture and Chinese character: the former one is built by columns and beams, and the latter one is written by stokes.
At the end of May, the education team went for a field study and conducted a series of “Mali Mali Palace”educational activity at the local primary schools in Zhuhai. Not only did the team adjust the layout displays from content to design but also enhanced the workshop with more interactive sessions to cater for the needs of students in Zhuhai. Through meeting with the local teachers in schools, the team learned more about the education aspects in Zhuhai and exchanged the experiences in promoting the traditional Chinese culture.
At the beginning of the workshop, when the tutors asked about which role in the Palace the students would like to play, most of the students felt excited and promptly replied some popular characters such as emperor and soldier. After an interactive drama played by the tutors, the students realized that each role in the Palace was equally important and it’s just similar to that in classroom: students need to cooperate each other to complete different duties for the whole class. In short, the responses to the activity from schools were quite positive. Most of the teachers believed that the format of “Mali Mali Palace” educational activity was able to lead students learning through play.
Our tutors will be grateful to see if students enjoy the activity and practice integrating traditional values in everyday life. Through a series of flexible displays and lively educational activities, the team look forwards to creating an interesting, caring “little Palace” to bridge the gaps between our new generation and traditional culture.
One of the parent volunteers, though her kids have already graduated, still went back to her kid’s alma mater and introduced the stories of the Palace for the current students.
Even the weather is barely warm but still cool in April, we truly feel warm and cozy in the library of SKH Tin Wan Chi Nam Primary School.
When the bell has just rung, a group of primary 3 students were patiently waiting for the guided tour activity of "Mali Mali Palace" in the library. Different from the past, instead of teachers or tutors, the activity was held by a group of parents. After briefing and forming individual groups, the parent volunteers have right away played as a role of tour-guide leading students to explore different stories about the Chinese architecture and the royal family in the Palace, and to practice the exercise of motif making. Their participation made this cultural education activity become more affinitive and meaningful.
To help promote the activity effectively, the teacher Ms Hung especially recruited a group of parent volunteers conducting the guided tours of "Mali Mali Palace". She believed that this special arrangement not just simply increased the amount of helpers but also let the students explore the delights of the Chinese culture in a rather relaxed atmosphere.
During the activity, our tutors were glad to see both parents and students do put whole attention into the displays. The parents have well prepared and understood how to guide with individual students according to their degree of learning. On the other side, the students were overwhelmed by the beautiful displays and the inspiring exercises. They actively participated into the activity and raised different questions about the “Palace”.
The parent-child guided tour is an interesting yet innovative arrangement. Through the interactions between students and parent volunteers, the students obtain a new learning experience they never forget. Besides helping students to rediscover the Chinese culture and its modern-day meanings, the guided tour will also uplift the significance of culture education and provide our tutors a new perspective on the development of education activities in the future. Thanks to SKH Tin Wan Chi Nam Primary School and the group of parent volunteers for the proactive supports. The activity would not be successful without their participations.
On being asked about the experience of tour-guiding, the participated students responded that they were willing to sacrifice the short breaks and devote themselves into the job without complaints.
“Do you know why the Forbidden City is called as ‘Zi Jin Cheng’ in Chinese?” a childish yet confident voice was introducing the name of the Palace. There were 8 student tour-guides led the other students to the “Mali Mali Palace” educational showcase at HHCKLA Buddhist Wisdom Primary School. Before being tour-guides, in November, the student volunteers have joined a guided tour of “Mali Mali Palace” at Ping Shan Tin Shui Wai Public Library. They took notes seriously to prepare the coming activities at their school.
In order to let more students join in the activity, the venue – student hall was specially opened at class breaks and lunch time during the exhibition period. Once the school bell rang, the student tour-guides would go get their working I.D. at the front door of student hall and threw themselves into work at once. Due to the good response to the activity, to cater for a large group of students participating at the same time, the teachers arranged several guided-tour routes. It’s not an easy task as the student tour-guides have to share the interesting facts of the exhibition to the other students within 4 minutes. Even-though the teachers and parents didn’t join in the work of guided tour, they would still help maintaining good orders during the activity. When the bell rang again, those busy tour-guides would go back to classrooms for study.
The performance of the tour-guides were sophisticated. One can imagine how tough they were on preparation; however, there was no complaint received from any of them. Some students got up earlier to review the script before going school as the others prefer reading it during breakfast time. Even they only need to recite, they enjoy to do it. Along this experience, those student tour-guides should be more or least knowing how their teachers’ daily works run.
Our Education Programme aims to plant the seeds of cultural heritage among children, teenagers and the public. From the experience of student guided-tour, we find that instead of studying passively, students are actually able to take up an active role in the learning process. Our team gives a big thank to HHCKLA Buddhist Wisdom Primary School for making this activity be meaningful and more inheritable to the students.
Our tutor was introducing the exhibits to the teachers and exchanging the thoughts in teaching and promoting traditional culture.
A student dressing up as an emperor was promoting the educational activity, “Mali Mali Palace”, in front of a bulletin board with many promotional materials designed by the teachers on it.
The exhibition was resourceful. Some extending activities were carried out through the campus TVs.
Starting from January 11, the educational activity, “Mali Mali Palace”, has been held in HHCKLA Buddhist Wisdom Primary School for 2 weeks. During the period, the teachers and students there got fully involved and supported to the activity. To enrich students’ learning experiences, the teachers led a group of students organizing a series of extended learning activities including shooting promotional trailers, designing sharing billboards and forming a team of student tour guides, etc. Ms Lun mentioned the activities wouldn’t be completed smoothly and properly without having supports and co-operations by the other teachers and the parent volunteers.
Apart from the workshops held by our tutors, the school teachers also participated in teaching/guiding students with our provided guidelines. The teachers indicated that besides the outcomes, they are rather concerned about students’ learning process from thinking, communicating to expressing. They pointed out an example -- during a special session of the activity, the students have to elect individual students among all for their virtues and talents matched with the symbolic meanings of the 12 patterns on the Emperor’s wardrobe. Even the 12 patterns were initially designed for the emperors, the hidden meanings and values are worth learning among students today. In order to enhance students’ understanding on the traditional virtue and interpretation skills, the teachers spent a whole class time to conduct the activity leading students to discuss the meanings of each virtue with life examples. Through listening to the discussion among students and observing students’ learning process, the teachers were able to formulate their teaching plans accordingly.
The educational activity, “Mali Mali Palace”, was as festive as a carnival in HHCKLA Buddhist Wisdom Primary School. We all look forward to sharing more teaching plans and extended activities held by different schools with you in the future.
Starting from November, We All Live in Forbidden City Education Programme and the Ping Shan Tin Shui Wai Public Library jointly run the Mali Mali Palace Exhibition, open up a journey starting from a seed to a palace, showing calligraphy alike Chinese architecture, giving blessings through motifs. Join us in search for extraordinary stories in the past and present.
Mali Mali Palace is comprised of exhibition, workshops and guided tours. Exploring Chinese culture through four themes, "Architecture", "The Emperor", "The Royal Family" and "Motifs", Mali Mali Palace encourages students to examine the issues regarding to personal growth, and to discover the beautiful inspirations given by the nature. The workshops and guided tours are hosted by tutors from the education team, through stories and activities we highlight the content for students, encourage self-studies, explorations and thinking, learning history and culture from different angles.
The exhibition is held at the library, from 6/11 to 30/11. After your journey of Mali Mali Palace Exhibition, you may find out more stories from the We All Live in the Forbidden City book series in the public libraries.
The 1st round application of 2015-16 Mali Mali Palace has finished. Thanks very much for your support! There are still a few time slots available for new applicants, please click here to download the application form for school exhibition; you may view the latest schedule of the activity from here.
Before the exhibition arrives the schools, Mali Mali Palace is making a run at the Ping Shan Tin Shui Wai Public Library from 6/11 to 30/12. We are also hosting workshops for students and teachers in the library, travelling to the forest-like palace, meeting the royal members and the officials, and taking beautiful blessings back home. Now, we sincerely invite you to "cast a spell" and enter the Palace with us!
Please click here to download the application form for workshops at the library.
To get to know more about the outcomes of the event, the head of Education (CnC) Ma Kin-chung (2nd from right) conducted an interview with some participated teachers in the S.K.H. Kei Yan Primary School.
The “Mali Mali Palace” touring display aimed to share the traditional Chinese culture with the entire school students and teachers through integrating the content with various academic subjects. By the end of April 2015, this education event has been held for over 4 thousand students and teachers at 7 primary schools in Hong Kong. Besides providing workshops to students, the team has also prepared a guided tour to explain every detail of the exhibits to teachers. It’s expected that teachers would lead their students to the exhibition and carry extended learning activities according to different grades/academic subjects. For instance, the teacher Ms Lai from one of the participating schools - P.L.K. Chong Kee Ting Primary School, invited the students, who joined the event, to share their learning experiences in the morning assembly. Due to the school teachers’ high involvement in the event, this special “Palace” was finally opened up for more students to learn the traditional Chinese culture in a joyful atmosphere.
We expect that the “Mali Mali Palace” touring display will reach out to more schools sharing more fun facts to students and teachers in the future. It now remains a limited amount of time-slots for display. If interested in joining this event, please click here to download the information sheet and application form.
For details about the “Mali Mali Palace” touring display, please click here.
Through playing wood blocks, two “little artisans” were learning to identify different parts of the Chinese wooden building; meanwhile, they also revealed that the creations of those parts of the building were actually inspired by different elements in the nature.
Who dare put on those “12 design symbols” which represent different kinds of moral character? In fact, all students should learn how to obtain those good characters.
The touring exhibition - Mali Mali Palace has been officially held at school!
The themes of the activity are related to Chinese architecture, imperial family members and traditional ornaments. Through using animation, sizeable displays and interactive installations, the exhibition presents a series of stories buried in the Palace in a more 3-dimensional way to students and teachers. It makes the student hall become like a “little Palace” that allows for visiting. Along with the touring exhibition, in order to enhance students’ understanding on the subject matters, our tutors will also hold either education workshop or guided tour, at schools for different purposes.
Will we come to your school next time?
The touring exhibition, "Mali Mali Palace", is an education activity which allows the entire school participate. Through using 2D and 3D displays, games, interactive activities, teachers and students will explore interesting stories hidden in the Palace. On the other side, catering to different circumstances from different institutions, guided-tours or workshops will take place at the venue. Via this activity, we try to link up Chinese culture with different school subjects, encouraging students to participate in different kinds of extended learning activities and, in the end, share the results with their family members at home.
The Forbidden City has survived for six hundred years with minimal damage. It is the largest wooden architectural complex in the world. Let’s "travel" with all the teachers and students to the Forbidden City, going through different stories related to Chinese architecture, imperial members, and ornaments. Now, we sincerely invite you to "cast a spell" and enter the Palace with us!
The 1st round of application has finished. Thanks very much for your previous supports. In order to allow more schools to join in, we currently allocate additional time slots of exhibition for new applications.
Please click here download the application form.
Please click to view the latest schedule of the activity.
