Irish Born Chinese

Chinese New Year is on Tuesday, 5 February this year.

For those just interested in seeing what's happening in Dublin, the Dublin Chinese New Year Festival will be the largest this year with over 90 events. Their programme is out, and you can find out more on what's on via dublinchinesenewyear.com. It's from 1st to 17th Feb, lots of food, activities, performances, and more!

And Cork is also hosting a Chinese New Year Festival full of events, you can check out corkchinesenewyear.com for more information.

I'm planning to head home on CNY eve, which is on Feb 4th, this is the big reunion dinner. And also for the kiddies, giving of Lai Sees (or Hung Bao) which are small red envelopes with cash, "a form of blessings and to suppress the aging and challenges associated with the coming year, to junior members of the family, mostly children and teenagers." This only applies to people who are married. So *yay*, use to be my favourite when I was a kid. 😉Apparently you give lai sees on the 1st day of CNY according to our good ole information provide that is wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year#New_Year's_Eve

All in all, I'm looking forward to the yummy CNY food. My brother's in-laws are over from China and their style of food is different to our Cantonese food, so it will be interesting to see what kind of fares they prepare and eat for dinner.

Besides that, I'm looking forward to some of the events happening around Dublin. If anyone is doing anything special or have pics or vids, please share with us in the comments or via twitter, we are @IrishChinese.

For anyone needing Cantonese phrases to wish someone a Happy New Year, here's some of the ones I would use (you can find more here):