![Worshippers pray as they burn their first joss sticks at a temple to welcome in the Lunar New Year of the Dragon in Hong Kong, Friday, Feb. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte) ASSOCIATED PRESS](https://turan.az/resized/news/2024/LPTWJHrfjkcXzP6Vj42w1gnpG07P2CdN6vQYYr24-750-500-resize.webp)
Worshippers pray as they burn their first joss sticks at a temple to welcome in the Lunar New Year of the Dragon in Hong Kong, Friday, Feb. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte) ASSOCIATED PRESS
Asia welcomes Lunar New Year of the Dragon with temple visits and celebrations
AP: People across Asia welcomed the Lunar New Year on Saturday with family gatherings, festivals and temple visits to ask for blessings.
The Lunar New Year is the most important annual holiday in China, a time for reunions with relatives and friends and to enjoy festive feasts. Each year is named after one of the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac, with this year being the Year of the Dragon — widely considered the most auspicious zodiac sign in Chinese communities.
The Year of the Dragon is also a popular year to give birth for Chinese because many couples hope their children will possess remarkable qualities symbolized by dragons, including strength, power and success.
Many residents of Hong Kong dressed in red, a lucky color in Chinese culture, to mark the start of the year. In gatherings, they savored rice cakes and turnip cakes, with children receiving cash-stuffed red envelopes as blessings from their married relatives. Outdoor exhibitions and floral displays prepared for the festival offered a chance for revelers to pose for photos.
In Beijing, crowds of people flocked to temple fairs to see traditional folk performances and bought snacks and artwork from booths. Many lit incense sticks to pray for good health and fortune.
Along with the predominantly Chinese societies in the Greater China region, the festival is also celebrated in South Korea, Vietnam and in overseas Chinese communities. In Myanmar and Malaysia, worshippers visited temples to pray for good luck and blessings. In Dharamshala, India, exiled Tibetan monks also took part in ceremonies to mark their new year.
-
- Politics
- 11 February 2024 14:08
In World
-
Saboteurs attacked France's TGV high-speed train network in coordinated actions that caused chaos on the country's busiest rail lines ahead of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony on Friday.
-
Kamala Harris signaled a major shift on US Gaza policy Thursday, with the presidential hopeful telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seal a peace deal and insisting she would not be "silent" on the suffering in the Palestinian enclave.
-
The solar system's tiniest planet may be hiding a big secret. Using data from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, scientists have determined that a 10-mile-thick diamond mantle may lie beneath the crust of Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.
-
A marine tanker carrying industrial fuel sank in rough seas off the Philippines on Thursday, causing the death of a crew member and an oil spill that could spread to waters off the capital Manila, officials said.
Leave a review