The Institute for Chinese Studies is offering "The Chinese Culture Box" - four different activity kits: art and writing, drama and music, history and geography, and numbers and games - to anyone who would like a deeper understanding of Chinese culture.
The box is mainly designed for educators who want to introduce or teach about China, and it can be borrowed for use in schools, community organizations and libraries.
"We made four boxes, but each entire box contains four kits," said Zhiwei Bi, an assistant director of the Institute for Chinese Studies. "It contains a lot of instruction tools to lend it to educators to help them to teach Chinese culture.
"It's for outreach, for exchange culture," Bi said. "Mainly we'd like to have something available for the educators when they want to teach (about) China."
The box contains "clear, simple, accurate information on various aspects of Chinese culture," Bi said.
Each kit is designed practically in order to help educators handle it easier.
For example, the Drama and Music kit is created to introduce Chinese performance arts, she said.
Bi said the Drama kit contains necessary equipment and tools - such as a script - to make the stage for Chinese shadow puppets.
"Lots of those activities are self-contained, so once they have it, they could put on the show themselves," she said.
Although the culture box has been used a lot by teachers from different schools, it was often used for another program, which is called "Passport to China" at Ohio State. Bi explained that "Passport to China" is the speaker's program, which sends volunteers to the classroom or organization to give a presentation about China. The Chinese culture box is often used for this program.
"I cannot tell how many times (the box is used) because we use it all the time," Bi said.
The implementation of the box came about upon receiving funding from the university.
"OSU has the outreach and engagement grant, and I've applied for it and got some money, so we've made it," Bi said.
Bi and her colleagues started to make the kit three years ago. It took a while to make everything because there is so much stuff in the box, she said.
"We'll keep updating and adding information of the box," Bi said.
The box helps to enrich people's understanding about China, particularly its culture and people.
"This is part of many aspects that we are working on to exchange Chinese culture," Bi said.
Groups interested in borrowing the box should contact the Insitute for Chinese Studies.
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