Kunghei Fatchoy

'Happiness and prosperity!'  

Kunghei fatchoy /gong-hey faa-chwhy (Cantonese)

Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, is marked by the lunisolar Chinese calendar, so the date changes from year to year.

The festivities usually start the day before the New Year and continue until the Lantern Festival, the 15th day of the new year.

I did my celebrating today as I was invited to join a group of seniors to celebrate Chinese New Year 2016. I had a very nice time and wanted to share the photos.

First I was greeted at the door with a name tag and someone offered to check my coat.  One inside, I was given a choice of two gifts. I chose a small calendar because I liked the red packaging.

Some of the Decorations
 

I have always loved red paper lanterns. Actually I like all paper lanterns but red stands out.

Our smiling servers

Food

Upper right and clockwise: fried rice, rice noodles, spareribs, sweet & sour spareribs, tofu and veggie

 Dessert

Warm sesame seed balls with red bean paste...so delicious. We also had an orange and some candy.

Appreciative diners

Entertainment Program

The entertainment program was very full. I was quite tired and had to leave at the last performance when the seniors did their sword dance (you'll see them below in the double ring dance).

Violinist playing a modern, electric violin & our MC who teaches drama to many of the performers.

A beautiful couple who sang a romantic song.

A group of limber seniors doing a double ring dance. They also did a sword dance but I didn't get photos.

A young champion on the left and her younger sister.

This young woman is champion Guzheng musician in both Canada and China. She also has impressive showmanship.

 

A Spoken Word group. The woman in black is reciting in English after the Chinese version done by the group.

These two ladies did a very nice Indian dance.

I think this is called a handkerchief dance.  The woman also performed the Indian dance above in purple costume.

This group of women performed several times in beautiful costumes (different costume for each dance).

Here is the same group of women in another costume.

 There are special events for Chinese New Year going on all month in my city.
 There are performances and exhibits at the  Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Pavilion  in Chinatown.
The Lion Dance is performed in different locations around Vancouver though I haven't seen one for a few years.

The Lion Dance will be the culmination of many of the activities and be held in Chinatown on Sunday.

 There are so many activities to choose from.

I hope you enjoyed the photos.

Are you planning to celebrate Chinese New Year where you live?

Kunghei Fatchoy!

My World Today

Another week is here.

Today was a provincial holiday called "Family Day". The day is intended to enable families to spend time together and bond. The holiday was first enacted in Alberta and slowly over time other provinces have followed suit. I think it is only a matter of time before the holiday becomes a national one. It has already grown from a provincial holiday for one province to a provincial holiday for 6 provinces.

It was a beautiful day today but I stayed in and made some nice soup and bannock bread. I didn't think to get photos but the food was good.

Today I did a bit of Spring cleaning though it isn't Spring yet. I've got so many small and large chores that need doing so am getting a bit of a head start. I washed one of the furniture covers for the outside patio and tidied a few things outside that were an eyesore for long. I also emptied and trashed a lot of dried goods that seem to have provided sustenance for bugs and washed out two of my (lower)  kitchen cabinets.

I've never, ever had bugs in my dried goods before.  Now that they have started it seems I can't get rid of them. There are two types.  The first are tiny little black bugs that seem to like red lentils best (and brown rice).  The second type lay a lot of eggs and once hatched they look like small moths.  I first noticed the problem in some gluten free flour I'd purchased and thrown out long ago but I guess the eggs had spread.  Whenever I think I've gotten rid of the bugs, I find more.

It has been a real nuisance and a waste of money. The little black critters even get into airtight containers. They are so tiny that they just crawl under the lids. I'm hopeful I got rid of them all now but somehow I think I might find a few more. Mostly everything they might be interested in has been trashed so I hope that  means I've gotten rid of everything they like to eat.

I've been reading a few good books.

I'm still working on Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This book by a Nigerian author now living in USA is about a young Nigerian woman who moves to the USA. It begins with the woman getting her hair braided in a salon and flashes back to her family life and love life in Nigeria to set the backdrop of how she get to America. I'm just at the part where she is about to return to Nigeria and reunite with her first love. I'm enjoying the book very much and is the second novel I've read by this author. The first one I read was, Half a Yellow Sun.

Snow in May is a delightful little book of short stories set in the bleak landscape of Siberia, Russia.  Personally, I don't really enjoy short stories. I prefer the fully developed story line that a longer book can provide. But the cover of this book appealed to me. It was only when I got it home that I discovered it wasn't a novel.

The setting for all the short stories is Magadan, an isolated fishing and mining town in northern Russia.  It once was a transit center for prisoners sent to Stalin's labor camps. The young author, Kseniya Melnik, is also from Magadan and immigrated to Alaska at age fifteen. She earned an MFA from New York University and now lives in Texas.

The third book I'm reading is Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee.  I'm still in early stages of the book.  The protagonist, Jean Louise Finch, "Scout" has returned to Maycomb, Alabama from New York City to visit her aging father Atticus.  Atticus is a long-time lawyer in Maycomb and some of you may remember him from the American classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, also written by Harper Lee. This is only her second novel and it is rumoured that she actually wrote it first but it was never published until summer of 2015.  I am enjoying it so far despite some of the negative reviews it received. I was on the library's wait list for 7 months to get this book and I'll have to finish it and return it on time as there is still a significant waiting list of hopeful readers.

Tomorrow I'll be joining some elderly folks for a celebration of Chinese New Year.  There will be singing, dancing and some foods that are eaten especially at Chinese New Year. It should be interesting and I'm looking forward to it.

I leave you now with a few shots I took today. We were fortunate to have a wonderful, sunny day and I believe tomorrow will be much the same. After that we expect heavy rains for the rest of the week.

Much of the new snow that had fallen on the mountains last Friday has melted.

This is my world this Tuesday. 

I'm joining Lady Fi and others for Our World Tuesday.

Enjoy the rest of your week.