Society

Sydney gears up for Chinese New Year celebration

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-01-27 15:25

SYDNEY - More than 600,000 locals and overseas visitors are expected to join the Chinese New Year celebrations in Sydney, Australia, welcoming the Year of the Rabbit, the local authorities said on Thursday.

The City of Sydney said more than 50 free festival events would be on offer from January 28 to February 13.

The celebrations will kick off on Friday evening at Belmore Park in the heart of Sydney's Asian community.

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Festival markets, exclusive performances, fireworks and the best of local Asian cuisine will be available at the park.

"The Chinese New Year celebration really focuses on one of the major groups that live here, and they're very much a developing part of our Australian culture," Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said on Thursday.

Ten percent of inner Sydney residents are of Chinese background, and Mandarin and Cantonese are the languages most spoken in Sydney households after English, Moore said.

Moore joined festival organizers in Sydney to launch the city's 2011 Sydney Chinese New Year Festival.

The City of Sydney has partnered with China's Hubei province to bring a fighting theme to this year's celebrations.

Wudang, a form of martial arts from Hubei that featured in the worldwide film sensation, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," will feature prominently throughout the festival.

About 250 artists from Hubei will join more than 2,500 local and international performers in the Chinese New Year twilight parade on February 6.

"I think the parade is the highlight," Moore said.

Enormous zodiac lanterns, exotic floats and flamboyant dragons will make their way through Sydney central business district (CBD), entertaining an estimated 100,000 onlookers.

On February12-13, the much-loved dragon boat races will see more than 3000 paddlers compete to the beat of a drum on Cockle Bay.

Sydney's festival is the largest Chinese New Year celebration outside Asia and will include exhibitions, tours, sport, food and cinema.

Sydney councilor Robert Kok said the celebrations marked the beginning of a new lunar calendar and the conclusion of 2010 - the Year of the Tiger.

"It is also a celebration of discarding old and bringing in new and celebrating the coming of new things," Kok said at Thursday's launch.

This year's charity partner for the festival is the Fred Hollows Foundation -- an organization that focuses on curing preventable blindness.

Foundation chief executive Brian Doolan said most of the 32 million people who suffer from preventable blindness are in Asia.

"Rabbits eat carrots, and carrots give you vitamin A, and vitamin A is really important for your eyesight," Doolan said at the launch.