Spending Our First Lunar Chinese New Year in China

Proud to be a Canadian senior citizen with Chinese ancestry, however, I didn't have any ties to China nor did I visit China much for the past five decades. It was not until the last few years before we started visiting this country with the world's 1/4 population.

I have never spent the lunar New Year in China and I didn't have a strong desire to do so until December of 2023. From the pictures I saw, China was very pretty around the time of the Chinese new year. We decided within a short period of time on spending my first Chinese New Year in China for the year of Dragon in 2024. We were not disappointed! We booked our tickets and off we went at the end of January till February for this special annual celebration in China!

No matter where we went in the past couple of weeks, the public spaces such as public parks, squares, offices and shopping malls and ordinary streets have all been turned into a sea of red flowers, red lucky envelops or red lanterns anticipating the arrival of the New Year day.

During our travel, we noticed that the streets were much quieter than we thought and many stores were closed for the holidays. So for our Chinese New Year day, we chose to watch a live show in a city theatre. We were not disappointed. The ground of the theatre was festively decorated while the cafes and restaurants inside the theatre were filled with theatre goers enjoying some teas and pastries before and after the show. Everyone looked happy and seemed to be enjoyable the time of their life. This city theatre was modern and spacious with comfortable seating for a large group of audience. It was much bigger and newer than the small private theatre where we went to watch our first show a few days ago. The audience was a little older and the theatre was about three quarter full. It was pretty good considering that that day was Chinese New Year day and families were busy celebrating at home.