Fireworks, dances greet Lunar Year

CHINA: Asia rang in the Year of the Rabbit yesterday with fireworks, lion dances and prayers that the bunny will live up to its reputation for happiness and good fortune in 2011.

From Sydney to Pyongyang, the Lunar New Year was marked by a thundering barrage of firecrackers, family feasts and rabbits galore.

In Beijing, as in cities across China, fireworks lit up the sky at midnight as millions of revellers celebrated the arrival of the Year of the Rabbit. The salvo rumbled on through the early hours of Thursday.

Fire authorities in the capital were on high alert against possible deadly fires sparked by the festivities with the city tinder-dry because of a three-month drought across northern China.

Fireworks are set off to ring in the year and ward off evil spirits but each year hundreds are reported hurt or killed in accidents across the nation of 1.3 billion people.

“We let off firecrackers to chase away the ‘nian’, a bad animal in Chinese legend. That way, it will not come and disturb you... It’s tradition,” said Wang Kuang, one of many visiting the huge temple fair in Beijing’s Ditan Park.

A five-star hotel in the northeastern city of Shenyang was gutted by fire early Thursday, in what police said was a blaze triggered by the festive explosives, Xinhua news agency reported. No one was hurt.

Snow and chilly weather across much of China failed to dampen the cheer of hundreds of millions of merry-makers who made their way to hometowns for the holiday, in what is considered the world’s largest annual human migration.

An estimated 700 million people had travelled home or were still on the move in an annual exodus that swamps the nation’s transport grid.

Chinese are frantic to return home for the holiday, which runs through next week, as it is the only time that many of the country’s estimated 230 million migrant workers are able to visit their parents, husbands, wives or children.

During the holiday, families typically gather for several days of feasting and partying, while youths receive cash gifts of red envelopes, or “hong bao”.

The Internet is driving a Chinese New Year rabbit-related spending frenzy, with thousands of online discounts offered for everything from alcohol to food and trips.

People are also rushing to buy bunnies as pets, sparking concern among animal rights activists that the cuddly creatures could suffer from neglect or be abandoned once the novelty has worn off.

The rabbit, occupying the fourth position in the Chinese zodiac, is closely linked to the moon and symbolises happiness and good fortune. BEIJING, Thursday, AFP