Gung Hay Fat Choy - Happy Chinese New Year
Happy Chinese New Year, everyone! If, like me, you live in a city with a large Asian population, you’ll definitely be celebrating some aspect of this lively and fun holiday. Here in Vancouver, there’s a fantastic parade, a lantern festival and several other events, all of which help ring in the new year in style. And, since this is such a multicultural city, there’s even an event called Gung Haggis Fat Choy, which celebrates both the Chinese New Year and Scotland’s Robbie Burns Day at the same time. It’s an awesome event with poetry readings, songs, dancing and great food (believe it or not, given that haggis is involved). The best thing about Chinese New Year, other than parades, is that you get to kind of evaluate your new year over again. If, like me, you place a lot of emphasis on the passage into a new year and what it means to you, the Chinese New Year allows you to take a second look at that. This year, the new year comes a little earlier (January 23) than recent years. This difference in our calendar and the Chinese calendar has to do with the