Greetings my esteemed Steemians,

Do you know that at least 1 of every 5 people in the world are celebrating the Lunar New Year?

That is the ratio of Chinese descendants to the number of world population.

But Chinese is not the only people that celebrate Lunar New Year.

The Vietnamese, Cambodian, Korean,
and the Chinese of Singaporean, Malaysian and the Phillipines are also celebrating it.

That is why the term Lunar instead of Chinese are used to describe the New Year according to the calendar of the moon throughout the world.

In Malaysia, the Lunar New Year usually described as the Chinese New Year. Because those who celebrate Lunar New Year in Malaysia are predominantly Chinese.

Papanog's way.

My maternal grandfather is from China and my wife, whose paternal grandfather is also from China, is also celebrating Chinese New Year.

For the Chinese people, besides spending their time with their family and friends, it is also to pay their respect to their ancestors.

For us, it is mostly about spending time with family and friends.

Open house

On the second day of the Chinese New Year, my parent's in-law will hold an open house. The open house, which is a normal practice for the Malaysian people when celebrating any seasons.

During the open house, almost all of our family members will come together and spend the day together.

Beside us preparing food for our guests, there are some family members who will also bring foods for everybody to enjoy, just like a potluck style.

Activities.

Besides eating, all the parents will give away 'ang pow' or red packets to all the children at that open house. Inside this red packet is a brand new money. Everybody will guess how much they will get.

You could imagine why they are so excited for the ang pow. They are waiting for this during Chinese New Year.

The other event that we are going to have is the Lion dance. We are going to invite one of the local lion dance troupe in Kota Kinabalu.

The lion dance performers will show their best acrobatic's skill to impress the audiences.

There are many ways how they are going to perform. The most famous is the poles performance.

World Champion Lion Dance Troupe comes from Malaysia.

Source

You could imagine, why this lion dance is so famous.

Other Open House

Beside my in-law's open house, On the first day, and 3rd day, both my uncle, mother's younger brothers, will also hold an open house.

Other than eating and giving ang pow, sometimes we will play cards or mahjong. Just to past the time. This can go on until late at night.
We don't really care about winning or losing. The most important is that we can spend time together. Because some of us got to meet only during this celebration.

Chinese New Year is all about family and friends. They will be someone that was with you last Chinese New Year will no longer be around. You are going to miss them dearly.

My late aunt, my mother's eldest sister who had just passed away last year would be dearly missed by all of us. May her soul rest in peace.

All are invited to our open house

There are a lot of different ways to celebrate Chinese New Year. This year, that is how I am going to celebrate mine. Meeting family and friends. Hope to see you at our open house.

To those who can't, wish you a Happy Lunar New Year of the Dog.

Have fun. Cheers

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@papanog is a General Practitioner who loves to talk about health. In his spare times, he will cook for his family. A new passion is to learn more about how to be a good steemit blogger and promoting steemit.com. Making sure that all contents are written to add value to whoever visits and reads this blog post.