Family reunions, festive meals and last-minute shopping as Hongkongers usher in Year of the Pig
- Citizens celebrate at Lunar New Year fairs and with religious rites at temples
- Carrie Lam wishes everyone a healthy and prosperous year as the city experiences the warmest Spring Festival season in 66 years
Hongkongers rang in the Lunar New Year on Monday night with festivities across the city and family reunions to welcome the Year of the Pig.
In a Lunar New Year tradition, worshippers at Wong Tai Sin temple in Kowloon rushed to burn the first incense to the Taoist deity, the Great Immortal Wong.
As ever, former actress Lana Wong Ha-wai, 88 – donning a plastic pig snout and ears in accordance with this year’s zodiac animal – was among the first in line.
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The celebrations were marked by some unseasonable weather. Temperatures across most parts of Hong Kong rose on Monday to 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit) or above, making it the balmiest at this time of the year since 1953, while the Observatory noted that a much warmer than usual January, with a maximum mean temperature of 20.4 degrees, was the fifth warmest on record for the month.
In an unusual move, Lam delivered her new year message through a one-minute clip filmed at a local dried seafood store and flower shops in Sheung Wan.
With festive music playing in the background, Lam, dressed in red, floral traditional Chinese attire, exchanged good wishes with members of the public. Citizens took advantage of the photo op.
“The Lunar New Year is an important festival for Chinese people. It is also a time for families to get together,” Lam said in the video.
“I chatted with shop owners and staff, and took the chance to extend early new year greetings to members of the public and exchange good wishes with them.”
Last year, Lam’s message was filmed outside Government House, her official residence, with her husband Lam Siu-por by her side. Previously, the city’s leaders had also chosen Government House as the setting of such videos.
Lam also found time to swing by the Lunar New Year fair in Kwai Chung in the afternoon, mingling and posing for selfies with residents.
She spent about 20 minutes visiting stalls, chatting with vendors and doing a bit of shopping, buying potted plants, fai chun – traditional calligraphy scrolls displaying wishes for good luck – and a couple of tins of egg rolls.
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Residents flocked to the city’s most popular Lunar New Year fair to scoop up last-minute bargains. Crowds began filing into Victoria Park in Causeway Bay in the early afternoon, many having clocked off work early for the three-day holiday.
“Our boss let us off after lunchtime today so my colleagues and I came down to the fair to walk around and do some shopping,” Etta Kwong, a marketer who works in Fortress Hill, said.
“I wanted to see if I could get some good deals on a pot of orchids, since it is the last day.”
But plants such as peach blossoms and narcissus, also known as the sacred lily, bloomed early because of the unusually warm, humid weather – which was bad news for florists. Many had to slash prices to offload stocks with flowers already bursting into brilliant displays of pink.
One vendor, surnamed Chan, said she had already thrown out more than 100 pots of peach blossom by the afternoon.
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“It’s like summertime now,” she said, as bees buzzed around her potted plants. “Business? It’s been terrible – just look at the flowers, they’re all dead. I’m telling you, Hong Kong will probably have no more winters soon.”
Chan said her boss had cut prices by more than half to about HK$100 (US$13) and was making a loss. “What’s the point of discounting? You lower prices to HK$100 and customers want HK$70. You lower it to HK$70 and they want it lower again.”
Another peach blossom and narcissus seller, surnamed Lee, said that selling festive flowers in warmer weather was “no different to gambling” and hoped the government would go easier on rents for stalls next year.
“At least if you’re growing vegetables, you’ve got multiple harvests and not growing a crop for an entire year that hinges on a few days of sales,” she said.
The owner of her stall bid HK$40,000 for the space at auction last year, which was a few thousand dollars more than the previous year.
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Even dry goods sellers were struggling. Jack Kwok’s family stall had expected their pig-themed hand-warmer cushions to sell like hot cakes.
“I guess people didn’t feel like they’d need them, especially in this heat,” he said. “We’ve been making a loss.”
By 3pm, they had cut prices from HK$68 to HK$38.
Victoria Park is the largest and most popular of 15 such bazaars across the city, featuring 180 wet and 284 dry goods stalls, eight thematic stalls and three fast food stalls, running until the early hours of the first day of Lunar New Year.
The temperature at the Observatory’s headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui hit 24.6 degrees by 11am on Monday morning, making it the second warmest Lunar New Year’s Eve on record.
The record temperature was 27.8 degrees in 1953.
The Year of the Pig is expected to start with warm, humid and foggy weather.
Observatory director Shun Chi-ming said all data indicated that temperatures from now to mid-February would likely remain above average.
“Where did winter go all of a sudden?” he wrote on social media.
