By Sahar Foladi
In Melbourne, the Chinese Lunar New Year Festival historically attracts over 100,000 people to the city’s Chinatown each year.
This year the Chinese Lunar New Year will be on 22 January on Sunday and here’s everything you need to know about it.
What is Lunar New Year?
The Lunar new year is the start of the New Year in the Chinese calendar and there’s an animal associated with each year.
This year’s animal is Rabbit, the fourth animal in the Chinese zodiac. But for the 258,000 Vietnam-born Australian residents, the fourth animal is a cat.
Guo Nian Hao means Happy New Year
How is Lunar New Year celebrated?
There are many traditional celebrations that occur during the new year celebrations.
A few are, elder family members handing out money in red envelopes to younger ones, firecrackers, fireworks wearing red clothes and decorations.
The Lunar new year is a time to feast and visit family members.
Cleaning the house to usher the old year before the new one is also common to bring forth luck and prosperity of the new year.
The dragon is a Chinese symbol of good fortune which is why the lunar new year is celebrated with dragon dance to highlight the festival celebrations.
Similarly, the lion dance is also considered good fortune and to chase away evil spirits, it is considered as one of the important traditions for the new year.
What does the Rabbit mean?
In Chinese zodiac, there’s a repeating cycle of 12 years and each year is represented by one of the 12 animals.
In order, the 12 animals are rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.
Each animal symbolises something and this year’s rabbit is known to be the luckiest out of all the 12 animals.
It symbolizes mercy, elegance, and beauty. The sign is a symbol of longevity, peace and prosperity in the Chinese culture. This year is predicted to be the year of hope.
The animals also correspond with the year a person was born in which represents important details about them.
People who are born in the year of the rabbit are calm and peaceful. They avoid fighting and arguing at all times, but are artistic and have good taste in life.
What events are there in Melbourne?
January 22: Venues around the city will be pulling out all the stops to celebrate Lunar New Year. Watch on as a traditional lion dance makes its way through the Queen Victoria Market to celebrate Lunar New Year and the Year of the Rabbit.
January 19 – February 14: Melbourne Museum, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the Crown Melbourne will all be hosting events to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
Apart from this, City of Greater Dandenong and various other municipalities are also celebrating by holding their own events locally.
On Sunday 15 January, there was a massive Lunar New Year event held in Springvale with thousands of people in attendance.
Springvale Library also celebrated with a lion dance on Sunday 15 January and Dandenong Plaza welcomed the year of the Rabbit with a traditional lion dance performance.
Celebrations are becoming widely celebrated throughout Australia with events taking place across the country to celebrate the year of the Rabbit.
