2016 Bangkok Chinese New Year
The 2016 Bangkok Chinese New Year was my first festival in Bangkok. All of Chinatown was flooded with festival goers, tourist police, entertainers, and (of course) plenty of food vendors. Most of the 2016 Bangkok Chinese New Year activity was situated along Yaowarat Road in the heart of Chinatown.
Note: Christopher Ryan is a photographer and male-model currently based in Bangkok, Thailand.
Chinese New Year is an important Chinese festival celebrated at the turn of the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. It is also known as the Spring Festival, the literal translation of the modern Chinese name. Celebrations traditionally run from the evening preceding the first day, to the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first calendar month. The first day of the New Year falls on the new moon between 21 January and 20 February. In 2016, the first day of Chinese New Year falls on Monday, February 8th.
The New Year festival is centuries old and gains significance because of several myths and traditions. Traditionally, the festival was a time to honour deities as well as ancestors. Chinese New Year is celebrated in countries and territories with significant Chinese populations, including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia,Malaysia, Mauritius, and the Philippines. Chinese New Year is considered a major holiday for the Chinese and has had influence on the lunar new year celebrations of its geographic neighbours.
Within China, regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the Chinese New Year vary widely. Often, the evening preceding Chinese New Year’s Day is an occasion for Chinese families to gather for the annual reunion dinner. It is also traditional for every family to thoroughly cleanse the house, in order to sweep away any ill-fortune and to make way for good incoming luck. Windows and doors will be decorated with red color paper-cuts and couplets with popular themes of “good fortune” or “happiness”, “wealth”, and “longevity”. Other activities include lighting firecrackers and giving money in red paper envelopes.
Wikipedia Credit
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Chinese New Year, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0