Feature: Hustle and bustle in Yangon shops ahead of Chinese

by Feng Yingqiu

YANGON, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- Shops, big and small, in Yangon's Chinatown have been stacking their shelves with festive food and Year of the Rooster decorative items a week ahead of the Chinese traditional new year, or spring festival.

As the Chinese Lunar New Year is approaching, such shops selling decorations and religious artifacts are bustling.

The Myanmar-Chinese have been busy decorating their houses with red-colored paper-cuts and Chinese couplets which hang on doors and walls as a sign anticipating good fortune and happiness in the upcoming new year.

Some supermarkets, mini-marts and temporary stalls erected along the roadside in downtown Yangon sell Chinese traditional cakes shaped into roosters and small edible pumpkins, peaches, sweets, biscuits, food made of glutinous rice.

Various imported new year goods also include red lanterns in various sizes, replicas of firecrackers, golden blocks and coins, paintings featuring the spring festival, antithetical couplets and other decorative items for the festival.

"Many old customers choose to buy New Year decorations from our shop," one local store owner told Xinhua.

"The store gets busier and busier as the holiday approaches."

Ahead of the New Year, joyful Myanmar-Chinese youngsters can be seen in small groups beating their drums to provide rhythms for the lion dance performances on the streets during rehearsals in preparation to make house-to-house calls when the New Year festival begins.

A big New Year festival event organizing body, the Chinese Chambers of Commerce, said Chinese traditional New Year or spring festival will be celebrated this year on the grandest scale for several decades in Chinatown in Yangon on Jan. 28, the first day of the Chinese calendar year of the Rooster.

Various entertainment programs including songs and dances and dragon and lion dances will be performed, with Chinese traditional handicrafts and cultural objects being showcased at booths, Gao Jingchuan, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Chambers of Commerce, told Xinhua.

With five decorated archways being built with related stages in Chinatown, more than 3,000 colorful light bulbs are also being installed along Maha Bandoola Street, the main road of Chinatown.

The main road of Chinatown in Yangon will be sealed off from vehicles to pave way for the festive processions of lion and dragon dance groups, which will sparkle during the New Year activities on Saturday morning, the very first day of the New Year.

A series of lion dance competitions, involving amateur lion dance groups, are to take place and the contests will run from the second day of the new calendar year for three consecutive nights and a presentation ceremony for prizes for the winners will follow, the event organizer told Xinhua.

The three-day competitions include ground dancing and dancing on tables, he added.

Other dragon dance groups from the outskirts of the city are also preparing to hold performances at some designated Chinese temples, international schools and in public parks.

At a time when the lunar new year is drawing closer, the Myanmar-Chinese community is also launching traditional charity activities with several social and religious organizations distributing aid to the poor and elderly people aged above 75, who have no children to care for them.

Other local Chinese cultural associations' rehearsals for staging performances to celebrate the traditional spring festival scheduled for the holidays are now in full swing.

With children dressed in new clothes and offered red-envelopes, knows as "Hongbao" as pocket money, Myanmar-Chinese will spend New Year's eve staying up late or all night to observe the coming of the New Year.