Chinese Community Language Tours: Mandarin

Join a tour of the Chau Chak Wing Museum’s exhibition ‘Chinese Toggles: Culture in Miniature’ in Mandarin.

Belt toggles, known as zhuizi (坠子), are small carved ornaments used as counterweights on cords tied around belts in traditional Chinese dress. Rising in popularity from the 1600s, belt toggles were used to secure pouches and cases for everyday items like tobacco, chopsticks, knives and money. Carved from a diverse range of natural materials to represent a variety of figures, plants, animals, and everyday objects, these splendid miniatures manifest Chinese culture and material values.

‘Chinese Toggles: Culture in Miniature’ was developed in partnership with the Powerhouse Museum and features objects mostly on loan from the Powerhouse collection, which includes one of the world’s largest collections of Chinese toggles, donated to the museum by Hedda and Alastair Morrison.