Feature: Spring Festival LEGO bricks help build Chinese cultural appeal

SHANGHAI, Jan. 26 (Xinhua) -- Celebrating the Chinese New Year, Yuyuan Garden, a historic commercial and tourist destination in east China's Shanghai, has become a bustling site. Hundreds of intricately designed lanterns shaped like flowers, butterflies and mythical creatures have transformed this venue into a festive world showcasing Chinese culture.

Among the displays, a towering traditional palace-style lantern exceeding three meters in height stands out. Visitors have the opportunity to send personal blessings through a mini-program on their cellphones, which will be displayed on digital screens on the lantern's two-layer body. Unlike typical lanterns made from paper or fabric, this one was constructed using large LEGO bricks.

It's the first time that global toy giant, the LEGO Group, is providing such a unique festive and interactive presence at the garden to celebrate the Spring Festival. The design of the large lantern is inspired by Trotting Lantern, one of the LEGO Spring Festival sets marking the Year of the Snake.

"The Trotting Lantern set marked the first time ever we put a light brick into a functioning model, which is very hard to make," Wen Xiaodong, a senior concept designer at the LEGO Group, told Xinhua, while adding that "it's also the first time that we included the dumpling element in our LEGO sets."

Wen, 37, is the creative mind behind LEGO Spring Festival sets and other Chinese cultural products such as the LEGO Monkie Kid series. He became the first designer from the Chinese mainland to work at the headquarters of the LEGO Group in Denmark, when he joined the company back in 2012.

As a Chinese working abroad, Wen has witnessed the growing interest of this multinational company, as well as the brand's global customers, in Chinese culture.

To mark the Year of the Pig in 2019, the LEGO Group rolled out its first Spring Festival sets -- including a product featuring the family reunion dinner on Chinese New Year's Eve and another displaying a dragon dance.

"By interpreting traditional Chinese New Year customs through LEGO bricks, we hope to enhance the festive atmosphere and create a new way for households to celebrate the festival with more joy and excitement," said Paul Huang, senior vice president of the LEGO Group and general manager of LEGO China.

Working with designers from different cultural backgrounds to produce the Spring Festival set is "never easy," Wen noted.

"It's important to get them interested in our own culture, because, to enjoy the design process, they need to like the culture first. Otherwise, they are not able to put their heart and love into the work," Wen said.

To get his foreign colleagues "on board," Wen tried to teach them Chinese and recommend classic or popular Chinese movies and shows to them, managing to successfully turn some of them into fans of Chinese culture.

Having designed Spring Festival sets for seven years, Wen admitted that the work is getting "harder and harder," as the designers have to identify the best ideas for the specific year and get as many people worldwide as possible interested in Chinese culture.

To create the best possible final product, the design team conducts several rounds of brainstorming to explore concepts, then tests their ideas with consumers in different locations, listens to feedback from their marketing team in China, and takes into account both iconic elements and latest trends among the people -- especially the young generation.

Wen recognizes that their designs are not capable of satisfying all consumers, given the richness and diversity of Spring Festival culture across China. As a result, the designers seek to capture the key elements of the festival in their design work and choices.

One such key feature is the Chinese zodiac. In each of the annual LEGO Spring Festival sets, there is a LEGO mini-figure dressed in a Chinese zodiac animal costume, thereby making the set a rare edition. Another focus is to get the whole family involved in the building process, which means including children, parents and grandparents.

"The Spring Festival is an occasion for family gathering, and we want the play experience of the LEGO Spring Festival set to also serve as a connecting activity for the entire family," Wen said.

Initially, LEGO Spring Festival sets were only distributed in China and some other Asian markets. Many people outside these regions, such as Wen's colleagues in Denmark, once asked Chinese friends to help them buy the sets. Now, such sets are available in LEGO stores worldwide and often become bestsellers.

"The set is super, super welcomed in other countries. For example, the Dragon set last year was sold out almost everywhere shortly after its release," Wen said. "I think over these years, we have started to make some people fall in love with our culture. It's really great to see this happening as a Chinese living in the Western world."

In late 2024, UNESCO inscribed "Spring Festival, social practices of the Chinese people in celebration of the traditional new year" on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Wen said this inclusion opened a gate for them to design something more special concerning the Spring Festival culture, boosting opportunities to introduce it even more extensively to the rest of the world.

"We're definitely going to launch more products related to Chinese culture," Wen said. "It's a never-ending source of inspiration." ■