Chinese New Year is celebrated in a lot of countries,
but today I'm going to talk about how I celebrated
back home in Malaysia.
Malaysia is a multicultural country
with the three main races being Malay, Chinese and Indian
people.
Because of that, Chinese New Year is widely celebrated.
There are a few things we do to prepare for the upcoming
new year.
We give the house a good cleaning
to get rid of the past year's bad luck
and to make way for the new year's
good luck.
We also decorate the house with plenty
of Chinese New Year decorations.
On the Eve of Chinese New year, we
attend what we call the reunion dinner. In my family,
a lot of us live overseas, so we always look forward
to seeing family again from all around the world.
Dinner is always hot pot and we all
contribute to the menu bringing meats, vegetables and whatever
we feel like eating.
On the first day of the new year,
we put on brand new clothes, as new clothes
symbolize a new start.
We start out the day by paying our respects to our ancestors
at the temple.
After that, we visit family going from house
to house where we catch up with family
and where married couples give out red packets to children
or any person who is single.
As I mentioned at the start of this video,
this is a big festival that is celebrated in Malaysia.
It is a two day public holiday and you can feel
the festivities all around.
I hope you've enjoyed this short little video about how
me and my family celebrate Chinese New Year