China’s biggest festival is going global

RED lanterns adorn the aisles of a small supermarket. There are stacks of red envelopes on sale, for stuffing cash in and handing out as gifts. A sign offers seasonal discounts. Such festive trappings are ubiquitous in China in the build-up to the lunar new year, which this year starts on January 28th. But this is Yangon, the capital of Myanmar, where Han Chinese are a mere 2.5% of the country’s population. They are a sign that Chinese new year is becoming a global holiday.

Several countries in Asia celebrate the lunar new year in their own way. But dragon and lion dances in Chinatowns the world over have helped to make China’s the most famous. These days growing numbers of people who are not of Chinese descent are joining in. In Tokyo window cleaners dress up as the animals of the Chinese zodiac. Barcelona’s Chinese parade includes dracs (a Catalan species of dragon). America, Canada and New Zealand have issued commemorative stamps for the year of the chicken (or cock or rooster, as the animal of 2017 is sometimes called, inaccurately: the Chinese word is gender neutral). Last year New York city made the lunar new year a school holiday for the first time.