Happy Chinese New Year!

新年快樂!

February 18, 2007 marks the beginning of Chinese New Year, year of the Pig (or Boar, depending on who you ask). This year is very special in that it is the "Year of the Golden Pig" which falls once every 60 years. Definitely lots to celebrate :) Chinese New Year also means the beginning of an exciting two-week festival filled with lots of delicious chinese food, red envelopes (filled with $$$), fireworks, celebrations (Lantern Festival), and wearing lots of red!

Just an interesting tidbit, famous people born in the Year of the Pig include: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Humphrey Bogart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ernest Hemingway, Alfred Hitchcock, David Letterman, and Arnold Schwarnenegger.

Here is a clip of the 2007 Chinese New Year Spectacular, which was performed here in NYC at Radio City Music Hall just last week. (Is there anything that YouTube doesn't have)?


To celebrate the new year, Skype has a special promotion that allows people to receive 24 minutes of free calling to people in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. For those of you who aren't familiar with Skype, it is a program that lets you make free calls over the internet to anyone else who also has the service. It's free and easy to use, and it works with most computers. The audio quality is pretty good so is the webcam. As far as I know, Skype can even replace a standard phone or cell phone. Because Chinese New Year is one of the world's biggest celebrations of family and friends, Skype allows people to stay connected during this time and provides Skype users to send New Year's greetings to family and friends. Skype is definitely the most advanced voice communications tool available today. What would we do without the internet :) Hats off to Skype!

Speaking of Skype, I found an interesting blog on celebrating Chinese New Year with Skype and Flickr, two very popular and useful programs out there on the internet today.

Wishing everyone a Healthy, Prosperous and Happy Lunar New Year!