lou-sang

This year the first day of Chinese New Year coincided with Australia Day, the 26th of January. And I believe that this is the first time that it has ever happened since we moved here from Malaysia. Having a public holiday on the day certainly brings back some of that homely Chinese New Year feeling.

This year also saw some relatives visiting from Singapore and Shanghai which added to the atmosphere.

Above, you can see the lou sang (or yee sheng, or lo hei), the raw fish salad that is eaten during this time of the Chinese calendar. We had substituted the raw fish with abalone and it was yum. We had this on the eve of CNY, Sunday night.

And here you can see my family and relatives tossing the salad with our chopsticks, saying auspicious words and wishing each other good health and good wealth for the year.

lou-sang-toss

To go with the lou sang, we had steamboat.

cny-steam-boat

The next morning, we went over to aunty Lee Hoon’s place where my cousin Han-Wei had made us a big variety of desserts. The girl really likes to bake. And it was super awesome. :)

han-weis-desserts

Later that night, we headed over to my aunty Gina’s place in the city where we had dinner and caught the Australia Day Perth Skyworks. The view from her balcony was fantastic.

perth-skyworks

At the end of the night, you can see masses of people walking from the river foreshore to the train stations and car parks. The inner city roads were closed to accommodate this.

barrack-street-people

To give you a slightly better perspective …

barrack-street-people-2

Happy Year of the Ox and Happy Australia Day! :)