This is the most important holiday of the year, and it is celebrated as festively as Christmas in North America. Chinese New Year is the "spring" festival. It celebrates the new agricultural year.
The festivities began a month ago, when the decorations began to adorn buildings, shops and restaurants. Festive red lanterns, red and gold good-luck banners, fake firecrackers, and lots and lots of lights lit up the city. Each mall had huge decorations, both inside and out. Here is a photo of the main lobby of Pacific Place, an upscale complex in Central. In the second photo you can see the tigers in front of Fendi (thanks for the photo, Joan). The stores were packed with shoppers, and there were lineups and crowd controls at Armani, Coach, Louis Vuitton, and all the other fancy shops. We noticed everyone (except us!) walking around with fancy purchases. Parents bought their kids new clothes for the holidays in preparation for visiting all the relatives. It reminded me of pre-Rosh Hashanah shopping when our kids were young.
Fourteen parks in HK hosted huge flower markets the week before the holiday. Joan and I visited the market in Victoria Park, Causeway Bay (close to Jeff's office, and across the road from the HK Central Library). I expected to see row after row of flower stalls, but as Jeff says, everything is done Hong Kong style - i.e. capitalize on the space and sell all kinds of "stuff", not just flowers! Two long rows were filled with the flowers that symbolize good luck, good business, romance, and good health: lilies, narcissus, peach blossoms, orchids (Susan: you must visit next year's market!), and tangerine trees.
The rest of the park looked like a carnival/country fair! Young kids were selling cheap toys, hawkers were demonstrating brushes, squeegees, and brooms (this is also "spring cleaning" time), and food kiosks were selling traditional cakes and sweets. The crowds were overwhelming, and we decided to leave when we realized we were being borne along by the crowds, rather than our own feet!Sunday (Valentine's Day) was the first day of the holiday. Jeff and I had prime tickets to the night parade (we stood in line for two hours the week before at the Visitors' Centre - no online purchasing).
Our seats reminded us of the t.v. stands that we sat in many years ago at the Orange Bowl Parade in Miami with the Kofman family. There was a loot bag, courtesy of Cathay Pacific, on each chair. The bag included a plastic raincoat (much needed!), candies, a programme, and some blow-up tigers. All of the acts stopped in front of our stands to perform their routines. The highlights were the flag wavers (Italy), the tiger band (from Switzerland, not Princeton), and the stilt-walkers from Belgium. The floats were Disney-esque, advertising airlines, places near and far (Macau, Hainan, Thailand). Many of the local ballet and dance academies had routines. Oddly enough, the San Diego Chargers cheerleaders and mascots pranced across the stage, too, and so did the scantily-dressed Tropizana dancers from the U.S. (like Copacabana - they must have been freezing, since it was only 9 degrees and raining!).
The fireworks on Monday night were spectacular. We stood with 200,000 other people on Kowloon watching the blasts of light right across the harbour.http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_china/2010-02-16/055268377038.html
On Tuesday, day 3 of the holiday, with the rain still coming down and the temperature well below 10 degrees, Jeff and I looked at each other and said "Next year - Phuket with all the other expats!"
Miscellaneous facts: Retailers did a roaring business this year - in some malls, revenues surged more than 25% over last year. Mainlanders flocked to HK to shop, shop, shop and buy, buy, buy. More than 78,000 people showed up at the Sha Tin racecourse and forked over more than US$140,000,000 on Tuesday alone.
Please don't ask us if we watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics - none of our 15 sports channels get any coverage.
And for those of you who think our apartment (last week's blog) looks rather small, take a look at this amazing video: http://planetgreen.discovery.com/videos/worlds-greenest-homes-hong-kong-space-saver.html
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.