Thoughts @ 3:15: Wrapping up the Lunar New Year

My first Lunar New Year in HK wrapped up with a fun night at the New Territories East Lunar New Year Lantern Carnival (新界東元宵綵燈會). This is a traditional event which wraps up 15th day of the Lunar New Year celebrations. Traditionally it's an opportunity for families and especially the unmarried guys and girls to get out the house and having a fun night out.

The entire event was setup around the Tseung Kwan O Po Tsui Park. There were numerous lanterns on display throughout the Park depicting different traditional Chinese New Year themes. Like this lotus like lantern surrounding by the fortune idols (福祿壽).

I was impressed by the height of these lanterns. (Photo: CathC)

Animals were another common theme for the lanterns. These bunny lanterns are so cute!

Lots of cute animal lanterns at the festival (Photo: CathC)

Here are some lanterns showing traditional Chinese toys and Lunar New Year activities.

The kids playing with a top was one of my favourite lanterns (Photo: CathC)

Since the 15th day of the Lunar New Year fell on the same day as Valentine's Day, romance was a big theme for the lanterns this year. This lantern of the loving couple at the centre of the park was my favourite.

The beautiful couple at the centre of the festival (Photo: CathC)

Aside from enjoying the beautiful lanterns, another traditional activity is the guess riddles known as (猜燈謎). Typically the riddle describing the word is hung underneath a lantern. Everyone gathers around the lantern and tries to guess the word the riddle is describing. At tonight\s festival, this was all done on a stage with the MC reading out the riddle. In the end, I was only able to get a couple of the riddles targeted at the kids, but everyone seemed to have lots of fun guessing also.

Another cultural part of the festival was the arts and crafts exhibition where exhibitors showed off their various talents like silver jewelry-making, embroidery, lantern crafting, and paper.cutting.