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Usher in the 2024 Year of the Wood Dragon in Your Home
Posted February 10, 2024
Chinese New Year is very near - the year of the Wood Dragon begins on February 10, 2024! Families gather from around the country (or even the world!) to celebrate the coming of the lunar year with togetherness, blessings, optimism, and love through traditions, stories, and delicious Chinese food.
Whether you are practicing Chinese traditions or not, here are some ways to celebrate and enjoy the blessings of happiness, luck, and prosperity in your home this new year!
Embrace culture and tradition
You can get tons of inspiration from traditional stories! The most famous myth surrounding the Chinese New Year’s origin involves the Nian beast (年兽), which ate livestock, crops, and even people.
Hence, the townsfolk drove it away with loud noises and red-colored items, leading to the tradition of fireworks and the color red all over CNY cultural celebrations!
Additionally, there are multiple variations of the Lunar New Year holiday from around the world, such as South Korea’s Seollal and Vietnam’s Tết, with their culturally specific traditions and festivities.
Feel free to dress up in red and decorate your home with red-colored and Chinese-influenced items. Some popular decorations include red lanterns of any size, red couplets bearing the Chinese word for luck (福), New Year-themed dragon paintings in line with this year’s Year of the Dragon, and paper cuttings.
Dragons symbolize wisdom, power, and strength, hence why it is a favorite among zodiac signs. To some, they merit good luck and prosperity and ward off evil; to others, it’s merely a great excuse to fill your home with red, especially if they love the color!
Actual photo from Tierra Lorenzo Lipa Merano Tower 1 Bedroom Model Unit
Another practice involves cleaning until the very day of Chinese New Year, since it is believed that cleaning on the day itself wipes away bad luck.
Whether you practice and believe this or not, you can use this as an opportunity to start anew by thoroughly cleaning your place, especially if it’s a New Year’s resolution! Use this as a chance to tidy up the corners of your place, get rid of things that don’t spark joy, and give away items to make way for new things!
Color up the season
Every aspect of Chinese New Year has meaning, from decorations to food to even colors! So yes, there are even lucky colors of the season for the upcoming year of the Wood Dragon, with feng shui often talking about the meanings of each color and who should use them when decorating for the year!
For example, the emerald green color is one of the colors of the year, symbolizing growth and rebirth! Torre Lorenzo Development Corporation itself primarily uses emerald green, so does this bear good fortune for Torre Lorenzo?
Another special color is spring green, which supposedly blesses those born in the Year of the Dragon with vitality, while yet another is imperial yellow, which reportedly is best for those who seek balance for the year.
If you’d like to spice up your Chinese New Year-themed decorations with a more colorful palette, use these colors to diversify and revitalize your unit or home! This is a great way to practice your taste in design and experiment with your taste while honoring culture at the same time.
Celebrate with family
Now that your home is cleaned out and decorated in red, time to invite your family over to celebrate together (and show off your place)! Chinese New Year is a family-oriented holiday, so it is a great chance to reconnect with loved ones you haven’t seen in a while or who live far away.
Play family games to reconnect and tap into your competitive side. Share stories and reminisce about your childhood years and school days, and catch up on what everyone is doing today.
Meet the new baby of the family and dote on the newest addition with new red baby clothes and toys. Dress them up as Mushu from Mulan! Talk about your 2024 feng shui and brag about how this year would be your year (for real this time!).
Watch the fireworks displays outside, especially those from nearby malls and establishments, as well as those from the heart of Chinatown.
Use this as an opportunity to show off your place as well, especially if it’s newly bought, newly furnished, and thoroughly cleaned. Of course, don’t forget to prepare the angpao for the kids! Best of all, feast and enjoy the delicious Chinese cuisine prepared for the whole family!
Feast on Chinese cuisine
Everybody loves food, especially Chinese cuisine! Whether you go out to eat banquet-style dinners in restaurants or take out to eat at home, eating Chinese food is the best part of the holiday.
Eat to your heart’s desire with delicacies like roasted Peking duck, suckling pig, lapu-lapu fish, and longevity noodles. Or, if you prefer simpler everyday favorites, you can go for everybody’s go-to treats like xiao long bao, wonton dumplings, siomai, spring rolls, and tikoy!
Close the meal out with scrumptious desserts like fruits, fa gao or fortune cake, tangyuan, and babao fan or Eight Treasures Rice! Several of these delicacies are considered “lucky food” for Chinese New Year as well.
Image from C&K 1989 Hotpot Facebook page
The Shoppes at 3Torre Lorenzo for example has C&K 1989 Hotpot and Chinatown Express to satisfy your Chinese food fix.
Chinatown Express has affordable favorites such as dimsum, yang chow fried rice, and asado and wonton noodle soup, while C&K 1989 has a vast variety of meat, vegetables, seafood, and dimsum for you to marinate in delicious soup broth perfect for a group or family gathering.
Iconic Chinese restaurants such as The Century Seafood Restaurant and Sze Chuan House are 10 minutes' drive away from Torre Lorenzo Malate. Torre Lorenzo Central is just a commute away to Binondo, the heart of Chinatown, where you can have temple visits and bring home authentic Chinese food!
You don’t have to go to the mall or prepare something extravagant to capture the essence of the holiday. Festivities such as simply decorating your home, celebrating with family, and enjoying delicious Chinese dishes are enough to make it a meaningful Chinese New Year.
