HowesIT in Malaysia: CNY 2012 in Malaysia

CNY 2012

One of the great things about living and working in Asia is the number of times you can get to celebrate a new year during one year. Always a highlight for the cultural programme is the Chinese Lunar New Year. This year we celebrated CNY in January and it involved a half day holiday on the Sunday, New Year holiday on Monday and Tuesday. Actually this was on our off days so we only had a half day extra off. Ruth had left the week before to fly back to Neww Zealand to celebrate Bradley and Jing Jing getting married. It was fitting for them to do this during CNY. Sadly we found out their intentions too late for us both to be able to join them. However I will be lucky enough to join them when they complete their traditional marriage in China.

Lanterns lighting up KLCC

These lanterns in Centrepoint were as good as any in the bigger malls.

I enjoy the way the shopping centres dress up for this occasion. Loads of reds and golds. This year is the year of the dragon so there were various themes relating to dragons. Of course there were numerous dragon dances taking place. These are noisy occasions with lots of drums and brightly coloured dragons leaping around. We had a team of Dragon dancers come into Centrepoint to perform the dance of the nine dragons. We waited around to see them. Actually we stopped off in Champs and we were a few minutes late so when we got down to where they were to perform it was over. The dragons were still on display but the dancers were resting.

The Water Dragon in 1 Utama

Complete with pearls and pretty coloured fish

1 Utama had a water dragon theme with its decorations this year. It was spectacular. We enjoyed wandering and enjoying the displays. We did journey in to KL to see the dragon at the Pavillion. It was amazing. An enormous beast that curved through the centre court area.

Dragons crawling along the walls of the Pavilion

Fireworks keeping me entertained at night.

The enormous dragon in the Pavilion

Outside the Pavilion was a display of friendship bears. Apparently these have been travelling around the world and they represent each of the countries involved in the United Nations. They are meant to be promoting world peace. Each has been painted up by an artist to represent their country. We found New Zealand and Malaysia in amongst them .

The team at Centrepoint

Along with the dragons are spectacular lion dances. These are also accompanied with loads of noise. But what really gets me excited are the fireworks that go off most nights for the best part of a month. These appear to be spontaneous and often it was more entertaining to sit on our balcony and watch the fireworks as they lit up the sky in various different places nearby. Always they are accompanied with loud bangs, nobody seems too concerned about the noise as it warns off evil spirits.

Here always seems to be something to celebrate in Malaysia and it is worth being here when Chinese New Year is being celebrated.