The Chinese New Year Celebration

I thought newspapers here will be full of Chinese New Year world coverage, but after some quick browsing of the leading local websites it’s embarrassing to admit the fact that I’ve found absolutely nothing - the world’s biggest holiday goes unnoticed in this part of the world.

But still, the Chinese embassy held an official get-together yesterday at the embassador’s residence. I wasn’t there, but Banma was kind enough to report :

We just got back from the reception at the embassador’s house in Hertzelia for the upcoming Chinese new years and the embassador gave his annual speech, especially referring to the Chinese students in the Israeli universities that are making China proud and will be bringing valuable knowledge back to China. He mentioned that the security situation here still requires attention and that they should watch out where they’re going and went on to discuss the economics development of China and the industrial cooperation with Israel.

The crowd included about 200 Chinese and about a dozen Israelis and some especially gorgeous kids were dancing around their proud Chinese mothers, I guess some of their Israeli dads preferred to stay at home. Most of the students seem to be happy with their time in Israel and are looking forward to returning to their country to lead the Chinese economy.

The Chinese embassador invited everybody to eat from the buffet, the embassador mentioning that the food was "kosher" with wonderfully arranged pig meat and shrimps. It was delicious, Chinese bear with orange juice was the big trend in the drinks department and the Chinese wine brought in from China was left with no-demand. [...]

It was really nice.

For those looking for something to watch or read about the Chinese new year, here are a few great links I came across :

• "Special report on China : Know your frienemy" is an hilarious Colbert Report’s Chinese New Year special. It’s a must! Thanks to AsiaPundIt for the tip -
  • PART 1: Happy Chinese New Year.
  • PART 2: Know your ‘Frenemy’
  • PART 3: Q&A on China
  • PART 4: Sheryl WuDunn on ‘the Frenemy’
  • PART 5: Get Busy America!
• Danwei also refers to the London Times’ China special and writes about Spring Festival keywords
• Sinosplice ranting away in "10 Reasons I Hate Chinese New Year".
• David on Formosa with a Chinese wordgame for the Chinese New Year of the Pig.
• To get a sense of the world celebrations, you might wanna check out Chinese new year 2007 on Youtube.

 

 
tags: Asia-Israel connections, Chinese culture, chinese_new_year, newspapers, world_coverage