Feature: Hustle and bustle in Yangon shops ahead of New Year

Shops, big and small, in Yangon's Chinatown have been putting on sale festive food and Year of the Ram decorative items a week ahead of the Chinese traditional new year, or spring festival.

As the Chinese Lunar New Year is approaching, such shops selling decorations and religious artifacts are bustling.

Myanmar-Chinese have been busy decorating their houses with red- color paper-cuts and Chinese couplets hung on doors and walls as a sign anticipating good fortune and happiness in the upcoming new year.

Some supermarkets, mini-marts and temporary stalls erected along the roadside in downtown Yangon sell Chinese traditional cakes shaped into rams and small edible pumpkins, peaches, sweets, biscuits, food made of glutinous rice and various imported new year goods such as red lanterns in various sizes, replicas of firecrackers, golden blocks and coins, paintings featuring the spring festival, including antithetical couplets and other decorative items for the festival.

"Many old customers choose to buy new year decorations from our shop," one local store owner told Xinhua.

"The store gets busier and busier with the coming holiday."

Ahead of the new year, joyful Myanmar-Chinese youngsters can be seen in small groups beating their drums to provide rhythm for the lion dance performances on the streets during rehearsal in preparation to make house-to-house calls when the new year festival begins.

An event organizer in Chinatown told Xinhua that a festive procession of two dozens' amateur lion and dragon dance groups will begin Yangon's new year activities on Wednesday afternoon, the eve of the lunar new year, according to Chinese calendar.

A series of lion dance competitions, involving the amateur lion dance groups, are to take place and the contests will run from the second day of the new calendar year for three consecutive nights and a presentation ceremony for prizes for the winners will follow, he said.

The three-day competitions include ground dancing and on-table dancing, he added.

Other dragon dance groups from the outskirts of the city are also preparing to launch performances at some designated Chinese temples, international schools and public parks.

At a time when the lunar new year is drawing near, the Myanmar- Chinese community is launching traditional charity activities with several social and religious organizations distributing cash aid to the poor and old-aged people above 75 years of age with no children to care for them.

Other local Chinese cultural associations are now in full swing with their rehearsals for staging performances to celebrate the traditional spring festival scheduled for the holidays.

With children dressed in new clothes and offered red-envelopes, knows as "Hongbao" as pocket money, Myanmar-Chinese will spend the new year eve by staying up late or all night to observe the coming of the new year. Endi