Firework on CNY Day
February 3 is Chinese New Year, I would like to use this chance to share Chinese New Year (my favorite festival) to all of you and I hope you will like this festival! Chinese New Year or sometimes we called it Lunar New Year is the longest and most important festival in Hong Kong and China. Since I came to US, I don't really have a chance to celebrate CNY with family and friends. So I REALLY MISS CHINESE NEW YEAR!
History of this festival: This long history festival started out of fear. It is a horrible mythical story about a lion-like monster's name called "Nian" which is also the Chinese word "Year". The monster will attack the village once a year and all the people are very scared about this. There is a man ward off the monster Nian by making loud noise in order to scare the monster away. Also, people will put red paper craft on the windows and doors so that "Nian" is not dare to enter their house. And the monster never come back. Next year, the village celebrate this as"passing the Nian"(year) with the same stuff. Gradually, it became the tradtion rituals of celebrating Chinese New Year until now!
More info on this link: http://chineseculture.about.com/od/chinesefestivals/a/ChineseNewYear.htm
It is a very traditional holidays like Christmas in America. In fact, Chinese New Year is a big deal to all of us and we will widely celebrate. It is a family reunion festival, we will visit each other and spend the day together. People will spend lots of money to buy new clothes and exchange presents. Besides, there are many myths about this festival. For example, on the Chinese New Year Eve, all the members of the family will clean the entire house together. The purpose of doing this is for sweeping away all the misfortune so that luck will come to us in the next year. Moreover, Chinese believe that the colour red represent luck and blessings. Thus, we will use tons of red colour paper crafts to decorate the house.
Red colour paper craftsFor me, the reason why like this festival is because I can see all the family members at once and I can get red pockets from the elderly! Oh, red pockets are actually money! Elderly will put money inside a red envelope and then passed out to unmarried juniors. It is consider as a blessing to the juniors! We all love to get red pockest!
Red pockets
Having been in the US for almost eight years now, I really miss the money part of Chinese New Year! I would like to know more about Hond Kong as a city--some general information regarding to this city would be a cool post.
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