Happy Chinese New Years!
January 31, 2014 is the first day of the Chinese New Year and we had such an amazing time.  This is the year of the horse.  You see horse statues and horse images on TV and in every mall and everywhere.  This is a picture of two horses in a jewelry store.  You see red lanterns and red decorations and red everywhere during the month of January here in Malaysia.

 Every food store has pallets and pallets of oranges in colorful red boxes.  It is the biggest thing that is given away as a gift to others during the Chinese New Year celebration.  Every time we went to our local store, you would see so many people with 10, 20 and 30 boxes of oranges on large flatbed carts, checking them out and loading them in their cars.  In the front of our apartment complex, a familiar site is a tangerine or orange tree that many stores sell for people to put in their homes.  Linda and I are standing by a tangerine tree at the entrance of the Molek Pine Apartments.

 Another gift that is given to people are all types of little cookies and pastries.  We had so many small containers of these cookies given to us.  Each time we collected two or three of them, we would take them with us to our District Meeting with the elders and handed them out there.  The brown pastries are pineapple filled and the green cookies, in front, are green pea cookies.  I don't particularly like the pineapple ones, but the green pea cookies melt in your mouth and then you chew the little pea on top.  Very sweet and very addicting.

 This is my favorite picture.  All Chinese New Year clothing is red, including all bras and ladies underwear.  I just had to stop and take a picture of this.  Linda was embarrassed and I got many Malaysians looking at me while I took the pictures.  The belief is if a single sister wears red underclothing, this would increase her chances of finding a future husband and her possibilities to get married in 2014 are greatly improved.  I tried to get Linda to buy some, but she already is tied down to her spouse for quite a long time.

 Here is another display of kids clothing for the Chinese New Year.  Bright red and pink colors and then lots of brightly colored flowers that adorn their homes at their entrances and along side of their altars.  Another huge belief is the importance of the number 8.  It is a lucky number.  On all elevators, there is no number 4 though. That number seems to be unlucky.  The word for number 4 sounds like the word for "death", so it is not used.  Instead, there is floor 3 and then 3A and then floor 5.  Interesting!

 Just a block from our apartment building is a Chinese temple.  We drive by it almost everyday.
It is beautifully adorned with all kinds of lanterns and banners and at night, there are special colored lights that hang down from the surrounding trees and looks like they are raining.  As the light comes down to the end of the light stick, it changes colors and is really intriguing to watch.  You can barely see the statue of a sitting Buddah right behind the yellow banner.  The yellow banner is not usually there, but this day, it is acting as an awning.

 Another symbol of the Chinese New Year is the bamboo shoots.  These little vases are found in almost every store, so I had to buy one for our home.  There are three levels of the bamboo in the vase.  A larger circle of bamboo on the bottom, then another level in the middle and the highest level at the top.  It symbolizes prosperity in a person's career and the every upward progress that can be yours through the year.  I just loved the shoots of bamboo growing out on all sides of the 3 stacks.  You just add some water in the vase and watch it grow.

 We were invited over to my 1st Counselor's home, Bro. Hong Min Tan, for a traditional Chinese New Year meal together.  Linda took the picture and I'm sitting in with our 4 Chinese elders.  Everyone eats from the center pot of food, which included squid (not bad), cuttlefish, scallops, and crab.  Also, in the chicken juice were lotus root (tasteless), with steamed lettuce, tomatoes and mushrooms.  I didn't like the quail eggs in pig feet meat with livers and hearts.  It is always fun to try new foods and have such a great experience with our JB Branch members.

 The fireworks were something else.  I have seen fireworks for all my life, but nothing like this.  They began at 12 midnight on Jan. 30th and went nonstop for 57 minutes.  The first 9 minutes were continuous "sky lit up" fireworks.  It was a sound you can't describe.  The rest of the hour were huge bangs and pops and we didn't get to bed until after 1 AM.  Things finally calmed down a bit and we could fall asleep.  This picture was an 8 foot strip of firecrackers, that you light at the bottom and the sound will scare away the evil spirits in a persons home.  It was loud enough to scare anything away.

Every store sells these Chines New Year pre-package gifts.  They flew off the shelves and cost around 330 ringgit ($110 USD). The color red chases away the evil spirits, just like the firecrackers, so, of course, everything is wrapped in red, with red clothing, red lanterns, red decorations and red foods.  The oranges and tangerines are given to bring a person luck through the year.  Therefore, we have a fridge full of oranges.  Our Chinese kids, that we teach, have given us oranges (two oranges symbolize two pieces of gold).  Our members give us bags of oranges and now, we are stocked with vitamin C for some time.  We have loved being a part of all these amazing traditions and experiences of our first Chinese New Year.  Next year is the year of the goat and Chinese New Year is on Feb. 19 for the Lunar New Year of 2015.