Many countries in Asia are celebrating the new lunar calendar year today, not just China.
China: Xīnnián hǎo” or “Good new year!”
Indonesia: Selamat tahun baru imlek
Malaysia: Selamat tahun baru cina — I hope I got this right!
Singapore: 新年快乐 Happy New Year!
South Korea: 새해 복 많이 받으세요 or Saehae bok mani badeuseyo!
Taiwan: Xin Nian Kuai Le or Happy New Year!
Vietnam: Chúc mừng năm mới
Happy Year of the Tiger, wherever you are! Hope you have a roar-some new year!
Thanks @pkml3! It’s a great Lunar New Year, essentially quieter but peaceful. We used to have literally loads of noise with fire crackers going off at odd times. That was stopped when I was a mere child, because indiscriminate firing of crackers caused injury and fires. Still, it really was something to see those crackers light up, sizzle and fire away!
🙂
Happy New Year of the Tiger!!! 🎉🎉🎉
I’ve already eaten rice cake. 😋
Kalimera!
Happy Lunar Year to all the friends who celebrate it!
Enjoy your time with your loved ones!
Thanks! We had mushroom cooked in oyster sauce, ginger, garlic and soy sauce. That’s our CNY dish. 🙂
Happy Lunar New Year everyone!
Happy New Year! 🎊
Happy Lunar New Year to everyone here on BoD! May this year bring lots of happiness and prosperity to you and your loved ones😊
Happy Lunar New Year to all. We had vegetables, ginger and beef with rice. Nothing fancy, but in the spirit of the day.
😂 are you saying that anything served with rice makes it an Asian cuisine, @Fern?
Hubby and I have his-and-hers dinner meetings and I don’t know if Chinese fusion is on the menu. But I guess I can order Chinese or Vietnamese food and have it to delivered to our offices for lunch. That’ll be our Lunar New Year celebration.
I’m craving for pho and deep fried egg rolls.
@packmule, not at all. Please don’t rice-shame me. 😆 And it was purely rice because usually husband prefers noodles or even potatoes (being a Brit), so I got my way for a change. Absolutely in the spirit of the day rather than by any rules – just an improvised meal with what is available in our rather remote area.
P.S., It’s torture that you can just order pho in.
Happy Lunar New Year to All!
Wishing everyone health, happiness, prosperity, and good fortune in this Year of the Tiger!
Happy new year! Wishing everyone at BOD a prosperous year of the tiger!
It is a big thing for us and usually starts with reunion dinner on eve of CNY. We had steamboat, roasted pork/s, yusheng (Prosperity Toss, shredded vegetables with condiments and abalone or salmon).
First day of CNY means visiting family and friends and more food!!! Kids get to receive red packets, we parents have to give out red packets. But it is quieter this year with the restriction limits (5 guests per household per day) and my grandmother’s passing last year (no visitions and red packets on that side of the family).
https://www.instagram.com/p/CZJiH8DoOkT/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Still there is 15 days to celebrate and pass on the traditions to our kids. May this year be a better one for everyone
Happy Lunar New Year ladies & gens!!!
Wish you a prosperous year,great health and abundance of good things coming your way this year ❤❤❤
Take care and stay safe!
Happy lunar new year! 🐅🥟🏮🧨🎇 I hope you all find some way, even small, to celebrate today.
Hi All, Let me add Gong Hey Fat Choy, the Cantonese greeting that I’m familiar with having grown up just outside of Chinatown in NYC. Most of my classmates had roots in Guangzhou(formerly Canton) and were either first or second generation Americans. Some came to this country via Cuba and other parts of Latin America. Those classmates were native Spanish speakers-they did great in Spanish class. Anyway, Lunar New Year has been a festive, wonderful time of year. I wish you all long noodles for a long, healthy life and red envelopes for prosperity.
For those of you with YouTube, check out ActionKid who is live streaming Lunar New Year festivities in New York/Manhattan’s Chinatown. Fire Crackers, poppers, lion dancers and people of all ages having a great time. There are people in tiger hats and street vendors and tourists.
Enjoy!
Happy lunar new year and happy year of the Tiger! Blessings, prosperity, good health and happiness to all.
I love that it’s such a long holiday (15 days as per @Grace!) and folks take time to be with family. And when people gather, there’s food!!! Enjoy and stay safe.
Happy Lunar Year Everyone!! Happy year of the Tiger! May this year bring lots of blessings and health to you all.
For the past couple years our neighbors give our kids red envelopes with $$. So I did that for our neighbors’ kids. Here in LA there’s plenty to choose for food but since it’s a busy holiday I’ll wait for tomorrow to get my order of food. My neighbor is going to get Pecking Duck, but I’m craving dim sum. Maybe not, I’m getting hungry just thinking of food lol
Happy Lunar New Year! Gung Hay Fat Choy! (Cantonese, as that’s the language my husband spoke with his parents.) May the Year of the Tiger bring all my BoD health, happiness, and prosperity.
I’m waiting outside a dumpling bar for my older daughter to arrive. This is about halfway between our homes. It’s Asian fusion, and had me at kimchi bacon dumplings. We’ll see if the reality meets expectation.
Happy Lunar New Year to everyone on BoD and many blessings to this community!
Happy Lunar New Year to my dear BoD community from Taipei, Taiwan! It’s been a long time since I’ve visited this site but was so happy to visit and catch up on some reading.
Thank you @Packmule for mentioning the countries that celebrate the Lunar New Year outside of China. It’s been fun seeing my Korean, Singaporean and Vietnamese post on social media about their Lunar New Year celebrations as well.
In Taiwan, people call it the Lunar New Year and not the Chinese New Year since most people born in Taiwan after 1930 don’t consider themselves Chinese, they consider themselves Taiwanese.
It’s the most important holiday here, and most people get 5 business days off work. If you include the holidays it can be a 9-day holiday. Families gather for the reunion dinner and on day two of the Lunar New Year married women return go to their parents’ home with their own families.
In our family my uncle’s wife always cooks a feast–this year our reunion dinner on the Lunar Near Year Eve consisted 14 savory dishes of crab, lobster, fish, clams, beef, chicken, pork, vegetables, rice noodles, etc. After dinner the unmarried adults and kids line up according to age and get red envelopes. Once we start working, we give red envelopes to our parnets and close relatives as well.
We have many relatives on my mom’s side so we went to their home again on the second day of the Lunar New Year. This time, my uncle’s wife and cousins had cooked up a feast of more than 12 dishes, mostly differnet from what we ate for the reunion dinner. The it was time for passing red envelopes again after dinner since my married female cousin and her kids were with her husband’s side of the family during the reunion dinner two days before.
Our kids love getting together with their cousins and second counsins and sometimes go on the apartment rooftop to set up firecrackers. After dinner our adult family members sometimes play mahjiong and the kids play video games together. I catch up with my cousins and other relatives and it’s a relaxed, joyful time. 🙂
Lantern Festival Falls on the 15th day of the Lunar New Year and it’s the first full moon in the new lunar year. This year it will fall on February 15, so we will celebrate Valentine’s Day on February 15 and Lantern Festival on February 15.
Many children paint lanterns as part of their school activities (or in my son’s case, it was part of their winter break homework) and some write riddles on strips of paper glued to the lanterns that people guess. Our neighborhood has been decorated with lanterns from school in the area, even some lanterns from a local international school.
It’s a fun and exiciting time for everyone, and adults get often their longest break in the year. School-aged children are on winter break for about three weeks (univeristy students around four weeks) and after the break our second semester starts.
Many shops sell tiger-themed food (steamed buns, breads, both Krispy Kreme and Mister Donut have tiger-shaped donuts, etc.) and people put up couplets with the words of “Tiger” on it. I wish one day you can visit Taipei during this time!
Blessings of peace, health, and joy to everyone here! Happy Year of the Tiger!
Thanks @Hatlady for the details on how you celebrate this holiday!!! Those 12, 14 dishes sound scrumptious and the time with family is precious. The lantern festival, are those lanterns float in the air or water?
I hope I can visit Taiwan again.
@Janey, thanks for your message. There are many kinds of lanterns for Lantern Festival. The government gives out free cardboard ones that kids assemble to children at public places such as some museums and parks. These come with a small LED light bulb and rod so kids can carry their lanterns.
When I was a child people made their own lanterns and put candles in them. Then it began to get more commercial, and people began buying lanterns that were battery-operated.
There are also ones that you write your wishes on and set off in the sky, we call those sky lanterns. Those are quite dangerous and can easily start fires! They are popular in tourist areas like Pingxi, a city about one hour north of Taipei. As a little girl I was actually “chased” by one of these sky lanterns since instead of heading up, the wind blew it toward ME and I felt like a hot ball of fire was chasing me! I haven’t set off a sky lantern since then (this was around 30 years ago), but might one day since I have kids now and want them to experience sky lanterns before they grow up.
The ones that decorate our neighborhood and many neighborhoods are lanterns made of paper/plastic/cloth with wires to hold them up. Children paint on them (lots of tigers on them this year) and write Happy New Year, the word “blessing” (fu(2) upside down in Mandarin which means “blessings have arrived）” and other auspicious words on them.
If you come to Taiwan let me know! 🙂
Thanks @HatLady, will keep you posted! Once business trips are allowed, Taiwan will be one of my first destinations. 🥰
Thanks for the nice wishes EVERYONE. It’s a great New Year and I’m feeling fat!!! LOL.
Hi! Happy new year all of you.
So it’s year of the Tiger, poor boys born this year won’t be pretendant for a love story with girls having a pearl in their body. ^^
(yeah, I’m watching this drama these times).
Hi @WEnchanteur, the Chinese dragon is depicted with a pearl, or chasing it. Are you watching a gumiho show?
Chinese folklore: https://www.chinafurnitureonline.com/the-dragons-pearl
@GB: yes, the funny romcom “my roommate is a gumiho”.
It was a quizz. BUZZZZ! You lost. 😉
Hey @WE at least I knew it had to be a gumiho show!! There’s more than one gumiho show with pearl in girl. Yeah, it rhymes. 😉
Hey @WEnchanteur,
Good to see you online! 🙂