This holiday season you will quite possibly be making a trip back home, wherever home may be. If that’s the case, then most likely your friends and family will be expecting you to return laden with treasures from China. Here are some gift ideas that are sure to please even the pickiest relatives on your gift list.

Chinese shadow puppets

Shadow puppets (皮影) 
These are great because they can either be given to older children to use, or to adults as decorative art. They’re beautifully crafted and traditionally Chinese. Buy a DVD featuring a Chinese Shadow Puppet performance to round out the gift.

Hulusi (葫芦丝) 
This traditional Dai musical instrument makes a good gift for the music lover in your life because it is easy to learn to play the basics, a lot like a Chinese version of the recorder we all learned to play in elementary school. It has an exotic look that makes it nice to display as well, and it is small, lightweight and easily portable.

Little Red Books (小红书)
You’re likely to have a lover of kitsch somewhere in your life, and these books, as ubiquitous as they are in China, make great souvenirs for the folks back home who still think of China in Maoist terms. Consider pairing the book with a few Chairman Mao badges or a PLA hat to make a perfect Communist kitsch gift set.

Chinese Batik (蜡染布)
Chinese batik cloth is native to Dali, in Yunnan province, and is the absolute perfect thing to hang on the wall of a college dorm back home. Batik is relatively inexpensive and lightweight compared to heavy embroidered textiles that are more common souveniers.

Fortune Frogs (招财蛙)
Over the past few years these unique handcarved wooden frogs have sprung up in markets all over China and they’re always a big hit when given as gifts. The frogs come with sticks which you rub over their back to produce a remarkably realistic croaking sound. The larger frogs produce deeper sounds, smaller frogs more high pitched sounds. These are also lightweight, easily portable, and a huge hit with kids and adults alike.

Baijiu （白酒）
Liquor is always a great gift, and you can’t go to a foreign country without bringing back a bit of the local spirits. Try to bring back some of the more creative versions of baijiu, like Horse Milk Liquor (马奶酒) from Inner Mongolia, just for shock value. Remember there are limits to how much liquor you can bring back without paying tarrifs, and to keep your luggage weight down buy small personal sized bottles for gift giving.

Traditional Clothes （唐装）
Chinese clothes are make the best gifts for babies and small children. For adults and teenagers it can be hard to find quality traditional clothing in the proper size unless you have it specially made, which is hard to do if you’re shopping for someone back home who isn’t there for fittings. Children, however, do not have this problem! Stay away from the traditional clothes on offer at places like Xiushui or Panjiayuan, which are cheap and poorly made, and instead get a Chinese friend to help you order a nicely made outfit on Taobao from a brand such as Yang (杨瑜).

Chinese paintings (国画)
Chinese paintings can be large or small, well crafted or poorly crafted, cheap or expensive, and the nice thing about them is the the folks back home largely cannot tell the difference between the really expensive ones and the ones produced by starving art students. Visit a market like Panjiayuan and load up on inexpensive yet beautiful Chinese painting scrolls to give as gifts to friends and family back home who will ooh and ahh over them and have no idea how little they cost you.

Chinglish T-shirts
These make great gifts for teenagers, who will appreciate the hipster appeal of t-shirts with ridiculous or innappropriate English sayings printed on them. The trick to getting good Chinglish t-shirts is not to go out in search of them, but to keep your eye open and snap them up when you see them, whether you have a recipient in mind or not. You will never have any trouble finding them a good home in the end.

Chopsticks (筷子)
Kuaizi are the perfect gift for anyone you might remember at the last minute. Load up on the paired sets of chopsticks plus chopstick holders that you can find at most tourist markets and give them to anyone you forgot to bring a designated gift back for. If you want to fancy the gift up a bit for a favorite aunt or uncle, purchase a set of four matched rice bowls and four sets of chopsticks and give a them a Chinese dinner set. 

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