Millions Of Asians Welcome Year Of Rat Celebration Of Lunar New Year Closes Businesses In Far East
Millions of Asians are saying goodbye to the Year of the Pig and greeting the Year of the Rat this week as the Lunar New Year brings many of the world’s fastest-growing economies to a halt.
The Year of the Rat begins Monday. People born in rat years - such as 1996, 1984, 1972, 1960, 1948, 1936, 1924, 1912 and 1900 - are sociable, decisive and clever, according to the Chinese zodiac, which has a 12-year cycle.
But for everyone ushering in the New Year, it’s a good idea to leave knives and brooms alone, lest you injure the spirits guarding your feast or sweep aside your New Year’s luck. Fireworks are thought to keep evil at bay.
Officially, it’s a three-day feast, but it can last a week or more. Money markets and factories close as workers rush home for family reunions and special meals that are supposed to bring luck and wealth.
In China, millions of workers went home for the biggest holiday of the year. Beijing’s normally teeming railway station appeared empty Sunday, with a few dozen last-minute travelers rushing through its cavernous main hall.
A 20-foot-tall inflatable yellow rat welcomed visitors to the Temple of the Earth fair, Beijing’s largest. Crowds thronged the fair to watch lion dances and stilt-walkers and, in a modern twist, sing a little karaoke.
Red lanterns decked out Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, where Premier Li Peng vowed before a gathering of 4,000 Communist Party leaders Sunday to make “promotion of cultural and ideological progress” a priority.
Nearly 100 Chinese cities banned firecrackers this year to reduce fires and casualties. Luck ran out for dozens of criminals executed nationwide prior to the New Year to scare the masses into respecting law and order.
In South Korea, some 28 million of the nation’s 44 million people were heading to ancestral homes. The 87-mile journey from Seoul to Taejon, a provincial capital, took seven hours Sunday instead of the usual 90 minutes.
The holiday is the one time of the year when feasting replaces faxing in frenetic Hong Kong. The streets grow eerily quiet as families reunite and temples fill up.
With the approach of New Year, Hong Kong’s skyscrapers and shopping malls were blazing with colored lights. On display were dwarf mandarin trees, favored because their Chinese name sounds like “good luck.”
Friends and relatives greeted each other with cries of “Kung hei fat choi!” - Cantonese for “Wishing you good fortune!”
Up to a million or more of Hong Kong’s 6 million people were expected to travel abroad, mostly to visit relatives in China. At the airport, extra staff coped with an expected 14 percent increase in traffic from last year.
Firecrackers are banned in Hong Kong, but its people will be compensated with a fireworks extravaganza over the harbor Tuesday, funded by Hong Kong businesses.