Chinese Spring Festival starts this Thursday, February 19th. It is a celebration of the Lunar New Year. 2015 is the year of the sheep – also called the goat. Korea and many other Asian countries also celebrate the Lunar New Year at this time.
Wellington celebrated the Lunar New Year last weekend while Auckland will wait until the weekend of February 27th. Christchurch will not hold the Lantern Festival this year as there are too many other celebrations in February. Last Thursday, Christchurch held the opening celebration for the Cricket World Cup and that included fireworks.
Dunedin, however, is holding a dragon parade from the Octagon, and dragon dancing, food stalls and fireworks in the Chinese Garden on Thursday February 19th.
Meanwhile Tourism New Zealand is expecting 40,000 Chinese people from Hong Kong, China and Taiwan this month. For some Chinese, they prefer to travel during their holiday period, instead of visiting family. There are more direct flights into New Zealand from China but there are also some specially chartered flights to bring visitors here for their holiday.
Type lunar in the search box to hear other posts about the Chinese New Year.
Vocabulary
• lunar (adj) – moon
• chartered flight – a special flight arranged by a group which sells all the seats to that group