The notion that Lunar New Year is a Chinese-only affair is being firmly dispelled this year as festivities unfold in countries across Asia and beyond.
The Chinese diaspora in southeast Asia and elsewhere is welcoming the Year of the Dog with firecrackers and lion dances while Vietnam and South Korea mark the turn of the year with their own culturally distinct and age-old traditions.
In Taiwan, the New Year unfolds in traditional Chinese style with banquets, family reunions, games of mahjong as well as shopping and travel.
PHOTO: AFP
The climax is the colorful Lantern Festival, which falls on the 15th-day of the Lunar New Year period, with lantern exhibitions and fireworks in many parts of the island.
In South Korea, the festival centers on family reunions, food and placating the ancestors.
Lunar New Year fell yesterday and some 30 million people took to the road on a traffic-snarled weekend to visit their hometowns and to sweep the family grave, according to the South Korean government.
PHOTO: AFP
Families set up altars in their homes weighed down with food and drink for several generations of departed family members.
"It is a duty to past generations and a family tradition," said 56-year-old Seoul businessman Kim Dong-su.
In Vietnam, Lunar New Year, or Tet, is also time for family piety and feeding hungry ghosts.
PHOTO: AP
Altars to ancestors are loaded with traditional dishes as well as at least five different fruits and candy. People also celebrate by visiting their relatives and cannot leave without eating or drinking as that would be considered bad luck.
Tet is also the time of gift-giving and some gifts destined for government officials reportedly are worth tens of thousands of dollars, prompting the government to issue warnings against bribery.
About 14 percent of Thailand's 64 million people are ethnic Chinese, but Lunar New Year traditions have spread beyond their community.
PHOTO: AP
Now many ethnic Thais enthusiastically join in the celebrations that will focus on Bangkok's Chinatown, where the main street will close to traffic for a festival.
People mark the holiday by giving oranges -- symbols of wealth -- and gift money in traditional red envelopes. Gold is also a popular gift.
On the eve of Lunar New Year, Chinese families prepare a feast of chicken, duck, pork and fish, along with sweets and fruit, and offer it to their ancestors, deceased relatives and other spirits.
PHOTO: AP
In Malaysia, ethnic Chinese put the finishing touches to spring cleaning before preparing lavish meals or booking restaurants for family banquets.
"We clean our house before Chinese New Year. You know for the New Year, everything should be clean," said writer Hood Yet Ying, 27, whose family is gathering in Malaysia's central Pahang state.
Malls in the capital Kuala Lumpur are packed with shoppers, and market stalls do a brisk trade in traditional New Year fare.
Enterprising retailers are also selling New Year-themed products, often colored red and gold. Red underwear and socks with gold trimming which deliver the traditional New Year message, "Wishing you prosperity," are a hit, especially with the younger generations.
"We have a lot of these customers who want to inject the red color into festivities," said Ashleye Yip, the manager of the Under Store in Kuala Lumpur, which sells the clothing.
"It's for the fun of it as well. It's so auspicious to have it," she said.
In Indonesia celebrations have taken hold since a ban on Lunar New Year, known as Imlek, was repealed in 2000.
Ethnic Chinese Indonesians make up around three percent of the 220 million people in the world's largest Muslim-populated nation.
They celebrate with prayers and festivities at homes and in temples, where the wealthy light tall candles and hand out cash and food to long lines of beggars.
Commercialism is rampant as stores and shopping malls in cities across the country are decked out in red and gold to cash-in holiday business.
Fireworks are banned, but electronic devices that light up and mimic the loud bangs are on sale and are flying off the shelves.
In tsunami-hit Banda Aceh, where Chinese merchants and traders are a mainstay of the local economy, festivities are muted just over a year after the disaster.
Only a few shops in the predominantly Chinese Peunayong business area display red Chinese lanterns.
Lily, 42, manning a car spare parts shop, said she will pray at a local temple that survived the tsunami's wrath.
"What more can you do now? There are no longer any places where we can have fun here," she said.
In Myanmar, Yangon's Chinatown is thronged with people shopping for Chinese cards and gift envelopes.
"I come here to buy envelopes and Chinese cards. I have to give pocket money to my children," said San San, a 50-year-old ethnic Chinese housewife.
Street performer Myo Naing and his Dragon Heart dance troupe will be there to ring in the New Year with a traditional lion dance.
"We believe that we will have good luck by dancing in the New Year," he said during a rehearsal. "This year is the Year of the Dog. Chinese people believe that it's the best year."
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