Happy Chinese New Year! This is the year of the dragon...a very lucky year! Tonight we celebrated with a traditional chinese dinner. We had noodles to represent a long life, dumplings to bring luck since the first banknote in China was called jiaozi (the chinese name for dumplings) and we had oranges to symbolize abundance and luck (the chinese word for tangerine sounds like luck). It is also traditional to have eight dishes to eat at dinner since the chinese word for eight is lucky....we did try our best to have eight dishes too!
There were many Chinese New Year celebrations happening around Toronto. The Royal Ontario Museum had chinese dancers, a dragon dance, and arts and crafts where Anna got to make her own dragon!
Anna's name in Chinese and the kite she made at the museum.
The Toronto Harbourfront also had a Lunar Festival where the world's first lantern aquarium was on display. The lanterns were made by Taiwan's top lantern maker and it was quite an impressive sight!
There were sharks...
Fish floating above us...
And of course Nemo!
Anna loved this exhibit. She kept looking around and saying "WOW!"
At the end of the exhibit the kids got to spin a wheel for a prize....Anna got a red envelope with a piece of chocolate in it. She liked that much more than she like her free dragon hat!
The title of this blog is in Mandarin and translates to:
Happy New Year! Now give me a red envelope!
