Places of interest in Singapore which celebrates CNY.

Chinatown will the first thing you think about when they ask you "Where is the place in Singapore that is celebrating Chinese new Year?" or " Where will the chinese be preparing or shopping to celebrate Chinese New Year?". But there are other places of interest in Singapore that celebrates CNY.

Singapore River Hong Bao Carnival

For example, at the Singapore river there was the Hong Bao Carnival, where Marina Promenade hosts the yearly carnival which is from Feburary 12 to 20. "Hong Bao" derives its name from the traditional red packets of money given by older Chinese to unmarried younger relatives during Chinese New Year.

There are also nightly cultural performances and traditional Chinese artwork can be enjoyed outdoors, icons from Chinese folklore (legendary heroes, pagodas, mythical figures) loom larger than life.

There will also be 88 paper lights being featured, including the God of Fortune and Chinese Zodiac.

Though, most of the River Hong Bao's festivities took place along the Esplanade Waterfront Promenade and the Marina Bay Floating Platform.

Chingay Parade in 2010

"Chingay" in tis Hokkien equivalent, translates to "costume and masquerade". The normally staid Sinaporeans yake Chingay to its more colourful and musical extreme every year during the Chingay Parade, which is a two-night street party and parade that amrks the climax of the Chinese New Year celebration.

Well the parade is now proudly international, growing from its purely Chiese traditional roots to embrace more than 5,000 Taiwanese acrobats, Filipino traditional dancers, circus acrobats and salsa artists. Parade participants would ride on floats or walk in procession, offering a riot of colour and noise that few other Singapore festivals can equal.

As part of the celebrations, a massive Fire Dragon Dance would take place along the parade route. The 40-strong dance troupe comes straight from the city of Guangxi in China and would perform the dance through strands of lit firecrackers. I'll try to put more next time! Enjoy the rest! :D

Attire worn on Chinese New Year

This blog post will tell you about the attire worn on Chinese New Year and Why.Hope you enjoy it! Here goes.

Clothing mainly featuring the colour red is commonly worn throughout the Chinese New Year because it is believed that red will scare away evil spirits and bad fortune. In addition, people typically wear new clothes also symbolizes having more than enough things to use and wear in the new year. The Cheongsam, also known as qi pao in chinese is normally embroidered with flowers or petals and are usually worn by woman.

Similarities and differences between celebrations in Singapore and other countries

Singapore
New Years Day of China Town- On New Year's Day, all the China towns of the world celebrate the New Year. In China Town of Singapore, A dragon dance with the drums and gongs. Some boys support the dragon by sticks and jump around.
Chingay Festival–Performing groupsperform a big celebration of New Year's Day. "Chingay" means the decorated floats and stages or disguises. When the laser lights project onto the sky in the evening, the parade starts. The dragon dances by roller skaters. Acrobatic boys from Taiwan, Katakari dances from India, a giant from France for example. There are 3000 performers of 23 groups keep dancing at the night. Chingay festival started 1973 and now it is the biggest festival of Singapore.

Beijing, china
Stilt dance-On New Year's Day, boys and girls of Beijing put 1m long wooden sticks on their legs. They dance on the stilts and visit the houses. They also perform a play on the stilts. They play as a old man and a young lady and a trick man. They do acrobatics as jumping by one leg or making quick turn.

Guizhou, China
New Year's Majestic Opera- Row-Kan tribes of Guizhou, China perform the traditional majestic opera on New Year's Day. When the music of drums, flutes, and gongs are played, the opera is started at the center of the village. There are a goddess, a hero and ogres. They install banners on their backs and perform a sword-play. They perform Chinese traditional story of Romance of the three kingdoms.
Hanoi, Vietnam

Human Chess of "Tet", New Year's Day- In Vietnam, New Yerar's Day is called as "Tet". Village people set off firecrackers and celebrate the big day. Boys and girls dress like a king and a queen or women servants of the Court and come to the Culture Center of Hanoi. The courtyard of the building is the chess board and boys plays against girls. The king and the queen put on a crown and install banners on their backs. The chess is played at the different place by professional players and these boys and girls move around as the chess pieces .

Taipei, Taiwan

The New Year's Day of Taiwan- In Taipei, Taiwan, people celebrate New Year's Day on January 15th by the lunar calendar. The last events of the New Year’s Day are "Lantern Festival". Around the National Theater and Concert Hall, more than 100 floats decorated by lanterns are lined up. On each float, the mechanical puppets of historic heros are installed. In front of the Memorial Hall, 100m long dragon dance and lion dances are performed.

Suwon, Korea

New Year's Day of Suwon- In Korea, people wear traditions costumes on the New Year's Day and greet formally with their parents and grand parents. This is the way to unify the family ties. Children received money given as a gift at the New Year from their parents and then they have banquets. In villages, "Nongak", dance of farmers, is performed. Young men dance with drums and gongs. They make quick turns and jumping around. As they turn their heads, white tapes put on the hats are waving. "Nongaku" is performed with the pray of the good harvests in autumn.

Yokohama, Japan

The New Year's Day of China Town- The China town of Yokohama city was born in 1867 as the 1st settlement for Chinese in Japan. Now the population is 5000 for 500 square meters. There are 500 restaurants and shops for the good tourist spots. On New Year's Day, Chinese people have a big celebration. Countdown is started on New Year Eve, during the lion and dragon dances which are performed by high school students. On the New Year's Day, firecrackers are set off. With the lout music of gongs and drams, dragon and lions are acrobatically dance through the China town. There are costume parades by minority Chinese people. On this day, every China town in the world celebrates the New Year's Day.

Pictures

Here are some of the pictures we took on the trip to Chinatown Heritage Tour:


-Hongbaos-
The Chinese normally give away the red packets
containing even numbers amount of money.

-Decorations-
These decorations can be hang up in the houses
to make the house have more CNY spirit.


-Decorations-
Decorations for CNY to be hung up in
the houses during the season.


-Clothes-
Clothes that are normally worn during
CNY for the women.

-Decorations-

-Decorations-


-Laterns-
For decorations.

Our own celebration for CNY

Alina's celebration for CNY
Here is how it is:

My family and I received lots of 'hongbao' which is also known as red packet in chinese. It contains even numbers of amount of money. We bought Chinese snacks which was mostly nuts, but it was delicious. Then we went to visit my cousins, we exchanged red packets and had dinner together. The next day, our whole family went to KFC at westmall. My family members are actually a non-chinese, so we didn't celebraed CNY much. So there, I saw lots of people with new clothes or buying new clothes, most of them were wearing red red. Some of the people even wore 'qipao' which is a traditional dress for the women and other traditional chinese costumes, they were all extermely beautiful. I wore a red top on that day. After the meal, we did lots of shopping and I got a new purse. Well, thats all. Hope you will enjoy reading the others! :D

Jerica's celebration for CNY
Hiya. Okay, here it goes:

I went to my granmother's house on the eve (1 day before the day of CNY) of CNY. We had reunion dinenr which was steamboat. There were different food like vegetables, meatballs, abalone, shark's fin soup, scallope, mushrooms, fish and more, accompanied by rice. It was a hearty meal. We rested awhile after having dinner and ate desserts like 'tang yuan' which is rice balls in English and had barbeque pork. My grandmother made chrysanthemum tea for us as she said most people fall sick during the CNY period due to the choice of food so we should have more water. After that, we went home.
The next day my family went to Malaysia to visit my other grandmother and to visit relatives. They were staying in a part of Malaysia--Penang, so we took and airplane there. We arrived about an hour then we headed to visit them. My father rented a car and he drove us there. We spent 2 days over there and did a lot of visiting. It was a great time over there as I had not seen and played with my cousins for a very long time. I didn't sleep for the whole night as we were playing with fire crackers and watching horror movies. That's about all. I'm looking forward to next year's CNY!(:

Description on how families celebrate CNY (About the food)

- 'Yusheng' -

A reunion dinner is held on New Year's Eve where members of the family , near and far away , get together for the celebration. The venue will usually be in or near the home of the most senior member of the family. The New Year's Eve dinner is very sumptuous and traditionally includes chicken and fish. Red packets for the immediate family are sometimes distributed during the renunion dinner. These packets often contain money in certain numbers that reflect good luck and honorability. Serveral foods are consumed to user in wealth, happiness and good fortune.

These are serveral examples of Chinese New year food :

-Barbeque Pork(The picture)-

-Buddha's delight
-Jau Gok
-Dumplings
-Mandrain oranges
-Meleon seed/ kwatji
-Noodles
-Sweets
-Bakwa
-Taro Cake
-Turnip cakes
-Fish

-Yusheng

Chinese New Year celebration in school

We gathered in the school hall for CNY celebrations. We were firstly entertained by the performance for CNY. Then, we were introduced food for CNY, the meanings and auspicious of the food. The teacher on stage talked a bit more about CNY like how CNY came about, the auspicious items and how people from different countries celebrated CNY. We had a quiz followed by then and we were awarded prizes for correct answers. After everything, we even sang some songs related to CNY. We enjoyed the programme a lot!

How the Chinese New Year Dates came about.

Chinese New Year is commonly called as Lunar New Year because it is based on the lunisolar chinese calendar. Chinese new year begins on the first day of the first month in the chinese calendar and ends on the 15th. Chinese New Year usually falls on the second new moon. In the Gregorian calendar Chinese New Year falls on different dates each year, a date between January 21 and February 20.

These are the Chinese New Year dates from 1996 to 2019:

February 19, 1996 ( year of rat)
February 7 , 1997 ( year of the ox)
January 28, 1998 ( year of the tiger)
February 16, 1999 (year the rabbit)
February 5 , 2000 ( year of the dragon )
January 24, 2001 ( year of the snake)
February 12, 2002 ( year of the horse)
February 1 , 2003 ( year of the sheep )
January 22, 2004 ( year of the Monkey)
February 9 , 2005 ( year of the Rooster)
January 29, 2006 ( year of the Dog)
February 18, 2007 ( year of the pig )
February 7, 2008 ( year of the rat )
January 26 , 2009 (year of the ox)
February 14 , 2010 ( year of the tiger )
February 3, 2011 ( year of the rabbit)
January 23 , 2012 ( year of the Dragon )
February 10, 2013 ( year of the snake)
January 31 , 2014 ( year of horse)
February 19, 2015 ( year of the Sheep )
February 8, 2016 ( year of the Monkey )
January 28, 2017 ( year of the rooster)
February 16 , 2018 ( year of the dog )
February 5 , 2019 (year of the pig)

History of Chinese New Year

Long ago, the world was not a safe place, monsters dominated the world. There was one horrifying monster that came out on the same day each year to eat people. This monster was named nien, and the people marked the end of the year by his visits to the human civilization. That is where the Chinese word for year came from.

This monster was the most feared by the people because everytime it came out, whole villages would be destroyed at that time. So , everytime the monster came, people would huddle together in their homes and stay up all night, waiting not to be eaten. This happened for many many years until a wise man thought up a plan to scare the monster away.

This man proposed that the people should light bamboo and wear red. The bamboo would crack and make a lot of noise, possibly scaring the monster away, and wearing red would also scare the monster away. Without eating any people.

Everytime when the new year is about to come, the villagers would wear red lanterns and red spring scrolls on windows and doors. People also use fire crackers to frighten away the nien

Credits : Wikipedia and library.thinkquest.org

About us

Hii. There are Alina, Haaris, Joel Tow and Jerica in this group. Haaris is our leader for this group, he controls the group like keeping us quiet and making important decisions. Our group name is musicrocks1999. We are from St.Anthony's Primary School. All of us are 11 years old and we're from class 5-2. We are going to introduce to the readers about Chinese New Year in this blog. Have fun reading this blog for informations about Chinese New Year and hope you'll gain some knowledge from it! :D