CHINESE NEW YEAR IN HONG KONG

I spent a day in Hong Kong before I returned to Canada before Chinese New Years. I stayed at a hotel on Nathan Road which is one of the main streets in Kowloon and a major shopping area. After breakfast I headed out along Nathan Road. I walked all the way to the harbor and back. I took as many pictures as I could, almost all on the theme of Chinese New Year. I wanted to take as many different pictures of Chinese New Year decorations as I could.

Chinese firecrackers

It;s the year of the dragon!

Chinese New Year tree in the lobby of the posh Peninsula Hotel.

Year of the dragon advertisement for Sogo, a Japanese department store.

The Hong Kong Museum of Art

This is where the Chinese new Year celebration would have been held. Their version of Times Square.

The fireworks would have been in a barge behind the stage in Victoria Harbor

I couldn't resist taking a picture of this dragon. It must have been at least 150 feet tall.

 There were some original 

and artistic displays in shop windows.

I had to take a picture of these wedding rings that featured a phoenix and dragon design with the character for double happiness in the middle, very traditional Chinese.

these giant bronze hands would be worthy of Rodin. they were sitting in front of the martial arts center where,

I took a picture of this awesome looking dragon.

This little golden dragon I saw on display in the window of a jewelery shop. It was barely six inches long. The detail is exquisite.

 The is was back to the hotel for a quick lunch before I was off to the airport for the flight home.

As the sign above said, "Kung Hei Fat Choy", May you explode with prosperity.

 

CHINESE NEW YEAR IN NANNING

This is the first time that I had ever been in Southern China so near to the Chinese New Year celebration. This year Chinese new year was very early, January 23rd. The date can vary greatly because the date is calculated according to the lunar calendar. the lunar calendar has few days per month than the Julian calendar and it has fewer months. So each year is considerably shorter than the Julian calendar. at any rate, that is why the date for Chinese New Year varies considerably from year to year.

One of the things that I noticed was that there were Chinese New Year decorations everywhere. I did not notice very much when I checked into the hotel  on Sunday evening, I was too tired to notice or to care. However, the next morning, while I was waiting for my driver to pick me up, I had lots of time to check out the decorations in the lobby of the hotel.

Beside the entrance to the elevators there were two, almost life size, statues of a boy and a girl in the pose of giving traditional Chinese, New Year greetings.

Outside the hotel I saw what I initially thought were trees, orange trees, that vaguely resembled Christmas trees in the west. As it turned out, they were composite trees. Someone took tall skinny trees, attached them together to make them look like one tree.

Also in the lobby of the hotel there was a table, actually several tables joined together, where vendors were selling items for Chinese New Year. Most of the items were dried fruit and other foodstuffs that people in China would give to one another for Chinese New Year. I spotted something that was familiar, a package of Ferro Roche chocolates. When I converted the price from CNY to Canadian dollars I was amazed. It worked out that each chocolate was worth $2.00 Canadian! No matter how desperate I might be for chocolate, I was not going to pay $2.00 Canadian for an individual piece of chocolate, at least not Ferro Roche.