[hang nadim]2010 Chinese New Year

Untuk Rakyat Malaysia Menyambut Tahun Baru China Di Perantauan



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For other traditions of celebrating lunar new year, see Lunar New Year.
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Related to Lantern Festival, which concludes the celebration of the New Year.
This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.
Chinese New Year or Spring Festival is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. It is sometimes called the "Lunar New Year" by English speakers. The festival traditionally begins on the first day of the first month (Chinese: 正月; pinyin: zhēng yuè) in the Chinese calendar and ends on the 15th; this day is called Lantern Festival. Chinese New Year's Eve is known as chú xī. It literally means "Year-pass Eve".

Chinese New Year is the longest and most important festivity in the Lunar Calendar. The origin of Chinese New Year is itself centuries old and gains significance because of several myths and traditions. Ancient Chinese New Year is a reflection on how the people behaved and what they believed in the most.

Celebrated in areas with large populations of ethnic Chinese, Chinese New Year is considered a major holiday for the Chinese and has had influence on the new year celebrations of its geographic neighbors, as well as cultures with whom the Chinese have had extensive interaction. These include Koreans (Seollal), Tibetans and Bhutanese (Losar), Mongolians (Tsagaan Sar), Vietnamese (Tết), and formerly the Japanese before 1873 (Oshogatsu). Outside of Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, Chinese New Year is also celebrated in countries with significant Han Chinese populations, such as Singapore, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. In countries such as Australia, Canada and the United States, although Chinese New Year is not an official holiday, many ethnic Chinese hold large celebrations and Australia Post, Canada Post, and the US Postal Service issues New Year's themed stamps.

Within China, regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the Chinese new year vary widely. People will pour out their money to buy presents, decoration, material, food, and clothing. It is also the tradition that every family thoroughly cleans the house to sweep away any ill-fortune in hopes to make way for good incoming luck. Windows and doors will be decorated with red colour paper-cuts and couplets with popular themes of “happiness”, “wealth”, and “longevity”. On the Eve of Chinese New Year, supper is a feast with families. Food will include such items as pigs, ducks, chicken and sweet delicacies. The family will end the night with firecrackers. Early the next morning, children will greet their parents by wishing them a healthy and happy new year, and receive money in red paper envelopes. The Chinese New Year tradition is a great way to reconcile forgetting all grudges, and sincerely wish peace and happiness for everyone.

Although the Chinese calendar traditionally does not use continuously numbered years, outside China its years are often numbered from the reign of Huangdi. But at least three different years numbered 1 are now used by various scholars, making the year 2009 "Chinese Year" 4707, 4706, or 4646.[2]

HARIMAU (TIGER)
Harimau (Panthera tigris) merupakan spesies binatang terbesar di kalangan empat jenis "kucing besar" dalam genus Panthera, dan anggota famili Felidae. Harimau yang berasal dari Asia timur dan selatan ini ialah sejenis haiwan pemangsa dan maging. Subspesies harimau yang lebih besar boleh mencecah panjang 3.3 m dan berat 300 kilogram. Selain kebesaran dan kegagahannya, ciri-ciri terpenting yang dimiliki harimau ialah corak belang menegak berwarna gelap yang melapisi bulunya yang berwarna keputihan atau merah kejinggaan.

Harimau yang amat mudah menyesuaikan diri dengan persekitaran baru, terdapat dari kawasan taiga Siberia, ke padang rumput terbuka, ke paya bakau tropika, antara lainnya. Harimau ialah haiwan yang biasanya gemar bersendiri dan berkelakuan kewilayahan, dan sering memerlukan kawasan habitat yang amat luas untuk menampung keperluan memburu mangsanya. Dan kerana mudah didapati di sebilangan kawasan di dunia yang paling padat kependudukan manusianya, menyebabkan sering terjadinya konflik antara harimau dan manusia. Tiga daripada sembilan subspesies harimau moden sudah diisytiharkan pupus dan enam yang selebihnya digolongkan sebagai terancam. Punca-punca utama harimau terancam ialah kemusnahan dan fragmentasi habitat, dan juga kegiatan memburu. Harimau yang pernah menduduki kawasan-kawasan seluas Mesopotamia dan Caucasus hingga Asia Selatan dan Timur, kini semakin berkurangan bilangannya. Walaupun semua spesies yang masih ada diberi perlindungan undang-undang, namun pemburuan, kemusnahan habitat dan kemurungan pembiakbakaan dalam tetap menjadi ancaman.