Kung Hei Fat Choi

Today is the celebration of the Chinese New Year.

There is quite a large Filipino-Chinese community here in the Philippines.

That is why the Chinese New Year here is celebrated with some pomp and noise, as it should properly be.

The noise began with uninterrupted fireworks explosion at the strike of midnight.

In the morning, we visited a mall that elaborately projected the Chinese New Year with huge versions of round fruits like orages, and even apples.

We saw extraordinarily large, round-shaped apples, something we've never seen before.

In the first place we don;t get to see a lot of apples here in the Philippines. They aren't grown here. They're picked somewhere else.

The malls were decorated with red ornaments, round hanging decors.

There were the traditional dragon dances which visited---or raided- each stall or establishment.

I really can't figure how the Chinese thought of having dragon dances, as if dragons actually danced.

The dragonsin these dragon dances tried to "swallow" hanging red envelopes that contained money.

They were followed by the beat of deafening drums and clanging cymbals, which provided the needed noise to drive away "bad spirits" or "bad luck," if superstition is to be believed.

We took ocassion to shoot some pictures of the Chinese tradition with our mobile phones, as we were not able to bring our camera.

I understand this is the year of the pig.

And we join in wishing everyone a happy chinese new year.

Kung Hei Fat choi!