Year of The Snake: Chinese New Year is celebrated acro”sssssssss” the world

Firecrackers traditionally made from bamboo shoots and gunpowder set skies alight in Chinese communities and Chinatowns across the world on Saturday night to welcome the Chinese New Year, aka the Spring Festival. Sunday marked the first day of a two-week celebration of efforts to ward of evil spirits and let health, wealth, and happiness take their place.

Chinese have traditionally emigrated settling all over the globe, but over the last couple of weeks millions of Chinese made their way home to reunite with friends and families for the festivities creating mass migration and making it the busiest transportation period of the year.

In preparation of the celebrations and the lavish annual reunion dinner of meats, fish and dumplings on New Year’s Eve Chinese families clean their homes from top to bottom to rid them of those evil spirits leaving room for good luck to come on in. Red paper decorations with greetings, sayings and good tidings grace the doors while brand new clothes and shoes symbolize a new start. Businesses pay off their debts for a clean slate and elders give the younger generations red envelopes with cash tidings in hopes of prosperity.

All are welcome

Everyone, Chinese or not is invited to share in the enthusiasm with fabulous parades of multicolored Chinese dragons and lions dancing to the sound of clashing cymbals and gongs in the hundreds of Chinatowns around the world from Africa to Australia, Europe to Asia and through to the America’s, who knows this”ssssssssss” may be your lucky year.

Businesses in China follow the Gregorian calendar whereas festivities follow the lunisolar Chinese calendar, in which one month is equal to one cycle of the moon, a New Year starts on the second new moon after the winter solstice. The Year of the Snake is from February 10th 2013 until January 30th 2014.

maka language consulting
www.makaitalia.com