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Chinese Spring Festival celebrated in Asian countries

2009-02-02 09:21 GAGOC

2009-02-01 - Chinese New Year or Spring Festival is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. It is an important holiday in East Asia. The festival traditionally begins on the first day of the first lunar month in the Chinese calendar and ends on the 15th. Celebrated in areas with large populations of ethnic Chinese, Chinese New Year is considered a major holiday for the Chinese and has had a strong influence on the new year celebrations of its geographic neighbours, as well as cultures with whom the Chinese have had extensive interaction. These include Koreans, Mongolians, Nepalese, Bhutanese, Vietnamese, and formerly the Japanese before 1873. In Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and other countries with significant Chinese populations, Chinese New Year is also celebrated, largely by overseas Chinese, but it is not part of the traditional culture of these countries. 

Folk artists from Qinyang perform sedan chair lifting for visitors to celebrate the traditional Chinese Spring Festival during a temple fair in Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province, Jan. 26, 2009.(Xinhua Photo)
 

A peddler displays decorations at the Chinatown in Jakarta, captial of Indonesia, on Jan. 8, 2009. As the traditional Chinese Spring Festival is coming, red lanterns, mascots and various decorations come into market in Jakarta. (Xinhua/Yue Yuewei)
  

A worker display boxes of rice cake at a store in Chinatown, in preparation for Chinese New Year in Manila January 22, 2009. Chinese people all over the world will usher in the Lunar New Year of the Ox on January 26.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
  

Visitors walk on the Jonker Walk decorated with Spring Festival decorations in Malaka, Malaysia, Jan. 29, 2009. This is the first Spring Festival after Malaka was listed as one of the Wolrd Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 2008. (Xinhua/Chong Voon Chung)
  

The chinese New Year celebration in Singapore
  

The Chinese New Year celebrations in Hong Kong, in 2009 the New Year falls on January 26th

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