xin nian kuai le!

Happy year of the pig!... or technically, year of the golden pig, which apparently only comes around every 60 years (that's 5 cycles of the Chinese zodiac). It's supposed to be especially auspicious, so according to the BBC, there's been a rush of Chinese couples getting married and attempting to conceive so that they can have golden pig babies (piglets?).

If you're curious about the picture above, you can get more information here.

Continuing in the Chinese new year vein, today was the warmest new year's day in HK history... or at least the warmest on record. I wasn't surprised by the news... I knew it was the warmest new year day I'd experienced (turns out that today broke the record set in 1982 -- the year my family moved to HK) ... and the warmth was a big contrast to my memories of Chinese new year being the coldest part of the HK year.

****CORRECTION****

According to my mom, it's not the year of the golden pig after all... it's actually the year of the fire pig. I don't know what the significance of that is -- guess I have some research to do.