New Year celebration| 5% for SL Charity.

A new year celebration when it is already February now, may seem bit odd right? But the first of February is celebrated as a new year. Not by us, but by Chinese people. So yesterday was the Chinese new year and we (the students of my Chinese institute) got together via zoom to celebrate Chinese new year. Chinese new year is also referred to as Spring festival and it is a much celebrated event just like the Sinhala and Tamil new year for us.

Lemme brief you about some chinese new year wishes.
新年快乐
Xīnnián kuàilè
This means “Happy new year”.

This year is also considered as the year of tiger. So we can also wishe happy new year of tiger as the following.
虎年快乐
Hǔ nián kuàilè

These two are the most basic ways of wishing a new year.

So our new year celebration starts with ganbei. Ganbei is a toast for the drinks. We all raise our wine glasses and cheer for the new year by saying Hǔ nián kuàilè.

Another tradition of the Chinese new year celebration is lightning a candle to symbolizes the light. And the most awaited moment of the ceremony is getting red pockets. The elders give money to the youngsters in a red envelope after they greet the elders. I think this is somewhat similar to the practices in our new year celebration.

We hold a little competition where the each glass perform something for the event. My friend and I made a small video for the competition. It was a cooking tutorial on jiaozi. Jiaozi means dumplings. Dumplings hold a significant place in Chinese culture just like milkrice for us. So we thought of making a cooking tutorial on it. Since I’m not a good enough cook to make something like jiaozi, I did the presenter’s part and my friend did the cooking part.

It was a fun session with singing and singing. We ended the celebrations with gongxi. Gongxi is congratulating and it has its own unique hand gesture…

公西大家新年快乐
Gōng xī dàjiā. Xīnnián kuàilè

Congrats ya’ll. Happy new year!