A Festival in Malaysia

With Lunar New Year around the corner, let's talk about some festivals in Malaysia ! 

Lunar New Year, or Chinese New Year, is celebrated nationwide every year around the month of February. In the Lunar Calendar, New Year celebration lasts for 15 days. Despite only having two days of public holidays, the general Chinese community will still put up a performance of the Chinese culture, among the most notable activities are the Lion Dance and the twenty-four festival drums (二十四节令鼓).

Talking about Chinese New Year, we of course could not miss out the important detail - 'ang paos'.

Ang paos are generally red packets filled with varied amount of money, and it can only be given by married couples to younger generations. So don't go around and give people red packets !

Usually on the night before the 1st day of Chinese New Year, Chinese families will have a reunion dinner. The dinner usually will have certain dishes due to their meanings and also maybe a pun or two. A common dish that can be found during the reunion dinner is fish. The quote "年年有鱼" or "having fish yearly" is a pun of "年年有余" . It means to have enough food or wealth to last for another year.

The last day of Chinese New Year is "Chap Goh Mei". It's also known as the Chinese version of Valentine's Day. On this day, single women will write their contact numbers of mandarin orange and throw it in a river while single men would collect and eat the oranges. 

This day often marks the end of the Chinese New Year festivities.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading and have a great New Year.