If you are planning to escape from the crowded Chinese New Year festivities in Singapore and come to enjoy the peace and quiet of Sydney during the festive break, you will be disappointed. Likewise if you are a newly arrived student leaving home for the first time and nursing the lonely prospect of eating the New Year Eve's dinner on your own, do not despair. Although Chinese New Year is not observed as a public holiday in Australia, Sydney with its significant Chinese migrants populations claims to have the largest Chinese New Year Celebrations outside of Asia with more than 600,000 people attend the festival annually, making it one of the most popular events on Sydney’s annual calendar. This annual festival has events that span over three weeks including the launch celebration, outdoor markets, evening street food stalls, Chinese top opera performances, dragon boat races, a film festival and multiple parades.
This year's festival will run from Friday 28 January to Sunday 13 February 2011, with the Twilight Parade and fireworks on Sunday 6 February expected to attract more than 100,000 people to the city streets. Well, to our new and lonely Singaporean students, why not joined holiday crowd to see the martial art experts and entertainers from Hubei who will be joining more than 2000 local performers to present a dazzling street spectacular with colourful costumes, floats and music. And if you still miss home and desperately homesick and want to join and share our makan, we can probably accommodate another five people at our dinner table in our home.
How i wish i can be in Sydney.
ReplyDeleteHere it is not a holiday too and all we can do is curdled under a warm blanket until the weekend, then we can party
Hi Lily,
ReplyDeleteDid you see the recent Oprah show featuring her Down Under experience together with her 300 plus lucky American fans? Well, be my guest and come to Sydney to celebrate the CNY with us.
Cheers,
Wow, very nice in Sydney.. nothing like this in New Jersey and we also live in the country side cos hubby doesn't like crowd. Will just go to the Chinese store and buy some CNY kueh to eat. Happy CNY!!
ReplyDeleteHi Gina,
ReplyDeleteThanks for visiting our blog. The Chinese stores are stocked with CNY goodies mainly from China at this time of the year. But we have to visit Lily's blog (Wei Sek Hong)for recipes to make our Sg/Malaysian CNY goodies. A Happy and Prosperous CNY to you and your family.
phil, the vietnamese celebrate the same lunar new year as the chinese? that means two big groups of migrants celebrate cny/tet. whereas this cny is the year of the rabbit, in the vietnamese calendar, it is the year of the cat.
ReplyDeletewishing you and your family a happy and prosperous chinese new year!
Hi yg,
ReplyDeleteBeside the Vietnamese other Asian communities such as the Koreans (Seollal),Bhutanese (Losar), Mongolians (Tsagaan Sar) and even the Japanese used to celebrate until 1873 (Kyu-shogatsu).If I am not mistaken some Japanese farmers still follow the Lunar Calendar to plant their crops and still celebrate the Kyushogatsu. Sydney do have a large Asian community and we Sydneysiders know how to party and will find an excuse to have one. :)