Chinese New Year: The Importance Of Sharing And Understanding Culture

http://elitedaily.com/life/culture/chinese-new-year-importance-sharing-understanding-culture/939615/

As a South African-born Asian and Australian citizen currently living in the UK (try to digest that), I'm incredibly lucky to have experienced a smorgasbord of different cultures. 

It seems perfectly normal to me that my family living room has an ancient Chinese painting placed next to a traditional African sculpture, and that my parents and I fire multiple languages at each other. 

Chinese New Year signals the beginning of the lunar calendar, and celebrations traditionally run for weeks. 

Festivities differ widely from country to country, and even from family to family. Most will spend the night before enjoying a big family dinner before heading downstairs to set off fireworks and firecrackers. 

As the sun rises, it signals the start of various parades with lots of noise and dancers dressed as lions, traditionally to scare away evil spirits.

Families wear new clothes and get together for food and to swap red envelopes containing money as a blessing.

The chinese new year or spring festival has started this past 28th of January. As is traditional, it was a day of family reunions and celebrations in the street for celebrate the arrival of the new year.

The chinese, catalan and spanish culture joined together for give the welcome to the new year. During this celebration, the dragons took the center of Barcelona and the condal city lived with the parades and activities the traditions of the orient.