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Archive for the ‘New Years Eve’ Category

More than 60,000 people flocked into Manchester city centre to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

Spectators watched a 175ft paper dragon weave through streets between Albert Square and Chinatown to the sound of drums and cymbals.

For the 18,000 Chinese people living in Greater Manchester it is the most important event on the calendar and organisers again pulled out all the stops to celebrate 2010 – The Year of the Tiger.

There were food stalls, kung fu demonstrations by Shaolin martial arts monks, acrobatics, and folk dance performances plus a firework display during the eight-hour festival.

A god-like figure also handed out red packets – the colour of good luck – to visitors, and the hundreds of stalls included jewellery and crafts.

Traditionally, Chinese New Year celebrates the start of new life and the season of ploughing and sowing.

The tiger is the Chinese zodiac sign associated with courage, passion, and power.

Tyze Kai Tai Li, chief organiser of the celebrations, said: “New Year is the important celebration for the Chinese in Manchester and across the world, and we want to welcome everyone to celebrate with us.

“We expected 16,000 people and we got even more than that. The celebrations get better and better each year. This year is even bigger than last year, because there was snow and people didn’t stay that long. When the weather’s good it always helps.”

The Manchester festival event ended with a huge fireworks display, but parties carried on into the night. The noise of the fireworks is aimed at frightening off evil spirits.

Festivities traditionally last 15 days in China, but that is often shortened in other countries, including Britain.

During the first week, family and friends gather and perform rituals that bring good luck. The second week ends with a lantern festival.

Brilliant high quality video of Chinese New Year fireworks in Marina Bay, Singapore. Send us your vids to see them right here at the best fireworks blog in the world.

See the West End fizz into life at the fireworks display at Leicester Square, which takes place to celebrate Chinese New Year and the beginning of the Year of the Tiger.

Fizz, bang and pop
Part of a day of public celebrations for Chinese New Year, the fireworks display at Leicester Square aims to get the Year of the Tiger off to a flying start with a free pyrotechnics display. Fireworks are a traditional part of Chinese New celebrations, and the free display in the West End are bound to draw Londoners in their thousands.

Year of the Tiger
Although Chinese New Year actually falls on the 14th February for 2010, London will be officially celebrating the start of the Year of the Tiger the weekend after with a series of city wide public events. As well as the spectacular fireworks display at Leicester Square, there’ll be lion dances and music in Trafalgar Square, celebrations in Chinatown and special menus in Chinese restaurants across London.

Grand finale
As with past years, the fireworks display at Leicester Square is the grand finale of a day long celebration for Chinese New Year in London. There’ll be parades and performances taking place throughout Central London, focusing on the area around Trafalgar Square and Chinatown.

Events for kids
The West End fireworks are bound to be a big hit with Londoners of all ages, but there’s also a special programme of arts and crafts events taking place at museums and galleries across the city to entertain children too. Running throughout half term, there’s mask and flag making workshops, tiger photo exhibitions and much more to see and do.

Chinese New Year is almost upon us and is always a great excuse for a fireworks display. Also known as the Spring Festival or sometimes the Lunar New Year, this is by far the largest celebration in China and is celebrated by over 1 billion people worldwide. This year the date falls on the same as Valentines Day so if you are looking for an opportunity to express your love for the Chinese culture, you will never get a better chance.

Each year in the Chinese calendar is represented by an animal and this year it is the turn of the Tiger. The animal of your birth year is said to give an insight into the characteristics of the individual. So if you were born in the following years, 1950, 1962, 1974, 1986, 1998 or indeed 2010 (although you are less likely to be reading this), what does it say about you?

Tiger people are sensitive, given to deep thinking, capable of great sympathy. They can be extremely short-tempered, however. Other people have great respect for them, but sometimes tiger people come into conflict with older people or those in authority. Sometimes Tiger people cannot make up their minds, which can result in a poor, hasty decision or a sound decision arrived at too late. They are suspicious of others, but they are courageous and powerful.

So now you know.

If you would like to learn more about the culture and traditions of the Chinese New Year, have a look at the Epic Fireworks Learning Centre which is packed with interesting facts and information –

So enough about history and tradition, get to the fireworks!

Fireworks have been used to celebrate Chinese New Year for centuries and this year will be no exception. There are festivities taking place all over the UK and indeed around the globe, here’s just a few of them.

• England –  London

Fireworks will illuminate the skies above London on February 21st when the capital’s Chinese community and visitors from across Europe descend on the city to welcome in the year of the tiger.
Chinese New Year is always a spectacular affair and this year Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square will be transformed with wonderful decorations and superb shows.
A selection of international and home-grown dancers will take to the streets to perform music, acrobatics and more, with firecrackers, Chinese dragons and lions adding to the spectacle.
There will also be some special goings on in Chinatown, with cultural stalls, food and fireworks in abundance.

Indeed the London celebrations will be the largest outside of Asia. With an exhibition at London City Hall displaying some stunning Chinese calligraphy and painting works from Beijing Municipal Institute of Culture and History.

• USA – New York

Art director Ethel Kessler worked on the new series of postage stamps with illustrator Kam Mak, an artist who grew up in New York City’s Chinatown and now lives in Brooklyn. They decided to focus on some of the common ways the Lunar New Year Holiday is celebrated. To commemorate the Year of the Tiger, they chose narcissus flowers, considered auspicious at any time of year and thus especially appropriate at this time of renewed hope for the future.

This is the second time the United States Postal Service has commissioned a Lunar New Year stamp series. It began its first Lunar New Year stamp series in 1993 in the Year of the Rooster, and completed that 12-year cycle in 2004, in the Year of the Monkey. The current stamp design incorporates elements from the previous series of Lunar New Year stamps. The first series was designed by artist Clarence Lee.

Typically, the Chinese start the New Year with a bang – or rather, many bangs. You can expect to enjoy a huge fireworks display while in New York – its thought that some 600,000 rounds of firecrackers are set off in celebration. That’s a lot of firecrackers!

Fireworks are used as part of an old tradition of frightening away any evil spirits that might be lurking around to spoil the New Year and the display is usually attended by a bevy of high-ranking officials and famous figures.

After the excitement of the fireworks, numerous dance troupes work their way along Chinatown’s main streets, kick-starting a massive festival filled with cultural performances.

• China – Hong Kong

Hong Kong banks were beginning Monday to print 200 million new notes for people to give away as “lucky money” during the Chinese New Year holiday. Up to 10 billion Hong Kong dollars (1.28 billion US dollars) will be given away in traditional red envelopes to children and young people during the holiday.

Long queues form at the city’s three note-issuing banks in the weeks running up to holiday with Hong Kong people insisting on using only crisp new banknotes as part of the annual tradition.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority said that 266 tons of cotton was needed to make the extra 200 million banknotes.

The new notes occupy 333 cubic metres of storage space, enough to fill 13 shipping containers and delivering them will take 5,000 security van trips.

Record sums of lucky money are expected to be handed out in the wealthy city of 7 million residents, to mark the start of the Chinese Year of the Tiger.

Most envelopes this year will contain 20-Hong-Kong-dollar bills. In leaner economic times, more people give out the smallest denomination, 10-Hong-Kong-dollar notes.

In Hong Kong, where the parade hits Tsim Sha Tsui East on the Kowloon peninsula on Chinese New Year’s Day, and spectacular fireworks can be seen over at Victoria Harbour. Visitors should also watch out for the Chinese New Year Fiesta, which features stage performances held at the New World Centre and the Avenue of Stars.

No Chinese New Year Celebrations would be complete without a lantern festival, this is normally on the 15th day of the festival and marks the end of the celebrations, the lanterns used here differ from those used in the mid autumn lantern festivals and tend to be red and oval shaped. All over mainland China right now there will be millions of these lanterns, of all different sizes hung up in hotels, restaurants, clubs and teahouses in preparation for the upcoming celebrations.

Of course if you would like to arrange your own lantern festival check out Epic Fireworks Lanterns and fill the sky with light on the 15th Day of the Chinese New Year.

Leeds New Year’s Eve fireworks 31 Decemeber 2009, where and when to see the fireworks.

Leeds will celebrate 2010 early with a packed carnival style afternoon of events, music, theatre, funfairs, entertainment and much, much more. For New Year’s celebrations will culminate in a fireworks display that will light up the skies above Leeds City Centre. For the best views of the fireworks at 5.30pm, head to the Headrow between Albion Street and Briggate.

So for a fantastic, colourful and explosive start to 2010, wrap up warm and make for the 2009/10 Leeds New Year’s Eve celebrations at Briggate and the Headrow, Leeds, Yorkshire LS1 8LA on Thursday 31 Dec 2009. 2-5.30pm

Enjoy the best views of the fireworks and find the best spots to watch the New Years Eve fireworks in Leeds and celebrate with colour. For your own fireworks display this year go to http://fireworksleeds.co.uk

Three ‘majestic queens’, 150 local participants, a giant prowling tiger, fireworks and illuminated skeleton dancers are planned by Walk the Plank to transform the streets of Newcastle this New Year’s Eve.

The event agency is producing the free family friendly Winter Carnival with the Culture10 at NewcastleGateshead Initiative, in partnership with Newcastle City Council, in the hope of enticing 10,000 people to the city centre from 2pm on Thursday 31 December.

The festival’s theme will be fire and ice bringing together three carnival queens, who will each represent different carnival traditions. PachaMama, created by Mandinga Arts, is a goddess revered by the indigenous people of the Andes and celebrates Latin America’s diversity, sensuality and passion.

Meanwhile, South East Asia’s Peacock Queen and her huge golden tiger, created by Kinetika, will prowl the streets of Newcastle, accompanied by costumed dancers and drummers.

The third royal lady is the never-seen-before, specially commissioned Ice Queen, created by Walk the Plank. Representing northern traditions of Yuletide misrule, she will display her command of fire and snow.

Floats, musicians and dancers will join the queens, parading through the centre of the city from 2pm and culminating with an early evening firework display at Newcastle Civic Centre at 6pm.

Walk the Plank have developed New Year’s Eve events with Culture10 at NewcastleGateshead Initiative and Newcastle City Council over a number of years, including Glowmobiles in 2007 and 2008.

For more info on fireworks for your New Years Eve Party go to http://www.fireworksnewcastle.co.uk

Jack Morton Worldwide is creating the fireworks display to mark midnight on New Year’s Eve over the River Thames and the London Eye.

This is the sixth consecutive year the brand experience consultancy has designed the event for the Mayor of London.

Millions of people across the country are expected to watch the display live on BBC One, and there will also be viewing areas by the Thames to see the display.

London Mayor Boris Johnson says, ‘London will bring in 2010 with a bang, a glittering explosion across the midnight sky. We want to show the world we are looking forward to the future with the optimism and energy that characterises our capital and makes it the most exciting city on earth.’

Julian Pullan, EVP managing director, EMEA, for Jack Morton, says, ‘We are now in our sixth year of working on the New Year’s Eve celebrations, and are very pleased to be continuing our partnership with the Greater London Authority on this event until 2011.’

MPs were last night accused of ‘insensitivity’ for throwing a private New Year’s Eve party on the Commons river terrace – so they can watch a spectacular end-of the decade fireworks show.

After a year of scandals over their expenses, 340 MPs, peers and their guests are paying £10 a head for an exclusive celebration in the shadow of Big Ben.

As thousands of ordinary revellers in Central London stand shivering in the cold to bring in the New Year, MPs will bid farewell to 2009 by gathering in a marquee across the river from the free London Eye fireworks show.

The MPs, peers and some senior bureaucrats will be served by catering staff with canapes and drinks including champagne.

Professional party organisers said the market rate for a ticket to such a unique event would be closer to £100 a head.

The ‘Noughtie MPs’ bash, approved by Commons Speaker John Bercow, has sparked anger among parliamentary officials, secretaries and manual workers, who have been banned from the terrace on New Year’s Eve –one of their few annual perks – to make way for the partying politicians.

‘They’ll be lucky if the whole bill for the evening is under £3,000,’ said one official. ‘After all their antics this year, having a knees-up like this is the height of insensitivity-You’d think they’d be keeping their heads down.’

Mr Bercow says the party will raise money for charity, but one member of the Commons staff said: ‘If they want to give money to charity they can write a cheque out for ten quid any time they like.’

Traditionally, MPs are back in their constituencies by December 31.

Suspicions about an event for them were aroused last week after staff were sent a memo by Serjeantat-Arms Jill Pay banning them from entering the building from 6pm on New Year’s Eve.

The memo said access would be ‘restricted to Members of both Houses, their escorted guests and duty staff only’.

Then invitations were seen that declared: ‘The Pavilion will open from 10pm until

12.30am, providing Members and their guests with an excellent view of the public fireworks display over the Thames whilst they welcome in the New Year.’

A spokesman for Mr Bercow says the event will make a £2,000 profit, after staff costs, for Help A London Child. MPs would get one drink in the ticket price and then pay normal ‘ commercial’ prices for bottled beer, wine and champagne – not the taxpayer-subsidised rates they usually paid.

But Commons insiders disputed the figures.

They claimed the cost of 15 staff paid £16 an hour doublerate overtime for up to six hours each would be over £1,400. In addition, they have been promised taxis home for up to £30 – a total of £450.

Mr Bercow’s spokesman last night said the party would raise money for a good cause. Click here for the full story.

Tickets for Edinburgh’s Hogmanay 2010; the greatest celebration of New Year in the world, are ON-SALE NOW! Details of this year’s Edinburgh Hogmanay programme are now available and it is one of the biggest ever with five days of spectacular concerts, events and fireworks. The Torchlight Procession starts proceedings on the 29th December and leads us into a host of new events from the Night Afore – Light Night to re:formation day on New Year’s Day, dance spectacular Off Kilter and Firelight with Carabosse are events not to be missed, transforming the Royal Mile into a hub of fire and light, and not forgetting an incredible music line-up including Madness, The Enemy, MYLO, Calvin Harris, Noisettes, Codeine Velvet Club and Frightened Rabbit plus loads more…

Tickets can be obtained on the Buy Tickets page, or by calling 0844 894 2010.