Chinese New Year in Hong Kong

I have seen and experienced Hong Kong in bits and parts. What I mean by it is that I have been there quite a few times, but always on official work and never on a dedicated holiday. Hence I have never had a chance to completely explore this city but somehow managed to see individual parts in my spare time like the Causeway Bay, the Peak, Kowloon, the Night Markets, LKF, the longest elevator, a few Malls, Victoria Harbour, etc. Over all these visits I have come to really like this city because in a number of ways it reminds me of Mumbai – with its crowds, chaos, traffic, smells, etc. But that’s a topic for another day and another post and today is for the Chinese New Year.

I had once visited Hong Kong just before the Chinese New Year when the city was beautifully decorated all over for this festival. Everything was decorated with props, beautiful lighting, paper cuts and flowers.

As a quick background, Chinese New Year is the most important traditional and the longest festival of the Chinese and marks the end of the winter season and start of the spring season. The origin of Chinese New Year is centuries old and is  celebrated in all countries with significant Chinese populations, such as China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritius, Philippines, Vietnam etc. During this festival, people buy presents, decoration material, food, and clothing and decorate the houses with red color paper cuts with popular themes  such as good fortune, happiness, long life, wealth etc. They also light fire crackers. You can read more on this at – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year

Below are a few pictures from my camera lens of Hong Kong during this festival –