The celebration of 15-day Chinese New Year festival has just come to an end on 9 Feb. The 15th day of the first lunar month is “Yuan Xiao” festival (元宵节) and it’s also the first night of the lunar year to see a full moon. There shall be many beautiful lanterns hanging around for people to appreciate, and people will try to solve riddles on the lanterns and eat Tangyuan (glutinous rice balls). The day is also known as Chinese Valentine’s day. In ancient China, it was the night that girls were allowed to leave homes to appreciate lanterns along the streets and they would drop their handkerchiefs for young men to pick them up and get to know the girls! I guess nowadays girls hardly use handkerchief but tissue packs to reserve dining tables during crowded lunch hours (especially in Singapore)!
Chinese New Year rice cake – “Nian gao” (年糕) sounds like “年高”, which literally means “increasingly prosperous year in year out”.
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Welcome to the Year of Ox! Here are some pics taken from Singapore Chinatown just before Chinese New Year. These cute golden oxen are just located at Chinatown Point.
As I mentioned in my earlier Chinese New Year article, red is liberally used in all decoration during this festive season. Someone once asked, “Is red the main color of China (clothes, lights, sauce, hong-bau, firecrackers, communism, flag, roofs, etc)?
Here is an answer which I found from the web: Red symbolizes good fortune. There is an ancient Chinese legend about a man-eating beast called “Nian” which is a predatory creature. To scare off Nian, people covered their homes with the color red and filled the air with loud noises, ie. fire crackers.
Chinese like to grace their gates and doors with Chinese New Year’s couplets which are written on two strips of red paper. The red couplets are composed of sentences that complement each other and often rhyme. Nowadays, we hardly see handwritten couplets; these are all printed with different designs. Read More »
Get hooked on Mid-Autumn Festival (Part 1/2) first before you proceed!
You have seen Chinatown in the day. Mid-Autumn Festival Part 2/2 is about S.E.X in The City… 
Freak not! It’s Mid-Autumn Festival story telling time! Read More »
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