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Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States

Mar 9, 2010

Late New Year Post

I might have posted this sooner had we did anything really exciting for CNY but I didn't feel like I could ignore posting something about the most important celebration in the Chinese Culture. So here it is.
Kung Hey Fat Choi- Xin Nin Kuai le - Canto and Mandarin greeting.


PV CNY from outypants on Vimeo.





Year of the Tiger


Chinese Lunar New Year officially began on February 14th this year.

That week it was 40's(F) with rain on and off. Our plans to see parades and visit places that were celebrating the New Year were changed by the weather.
We are Michiganders, used to temperatures in 20's and 30's and six months of winter.
However we are also used to warm cars and dry winters. This wet wintry weather with two small kids, who don't have much interest in sight seeing, changed our plans to venture out,
 We didn't even visit the Lam Tsuen festival which is in our part of Hong Kong.
 The kids did receive three Hongbao's. These are the red packets traditionally given out at New Year to children, people in service positions and we recently learned, single people. They are suppose to have two bills and the bills should not equal 40 ( 4 is an unlucky number) The number 4 sounds like the word that means death. One of our guards here at Parc Versailles who is always friendly to the kids and who possibly speaks the least amount of English, handed them packets.
There was  also a lady who was randomly handing them out on the subway, and the third packets came from Nathan's boss. They are referred to as Lai See here in Hong Kong.

 We did manage to visit a carnival here at our apartment complex that had the traditional dragon dance and there balloons and games.



The Lam Tsuen orignal wishing tree became too brittle to trust people to throw their wishes onto it. So here is preparations for the New Year festival. This includes a "fake" wishing tree that people can try to throw and catch on the branches.


OUTFITS
















DECORATIONS
and
THE HONGBAO


























Maybe next year we will visit the fireworks or parade. Brave the midnight flower market on the eve of the New Year and brave the traffic to the wishing tree festival. Then again with 40˚ weather maybe we will go to Singapore.

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