Chinese New Year in Frankfurt - Part 1

Unlike in Asia Chinese New Year is pretty much unknown here, especially that various celebrations take place around this date here. But because of the many asian friends I have we got invitations to several of them and heard of several taking place. Not to mention our own celebration on the 16th, which is almost booked out...

We (Michael, me, Luat and a friend of him) decided to join the celebration of several taiwanase organisations  in a public hall  in a district of Frankfurt because the guys from the OCYT (Overseas Young Compatriot Talents), a newly founded association to connect and promote chinese speaking university graduates, actually the second generation of overseas living chinese people, invited us. The opening was scheduled for 6 p.m. but the program itself started at 7 p.m.

In the meanwhile we tasted some of the offered snacks:

This was followed by the "Eden Rejoicing Chorus" from Taiwan, which performed several songs in mandarin, taiwanese, kantonese, hakka, english and german (The guys were really good):

In between the two parts of their performance the magician "Brother Lin" did a very professional show:

And finally the performance of our friends from the OCYT:

(Kao)



(Gi)

They presented a danceshow guiding through 50 years of music

(Twist)



(pop incl. Jay Chou)



(and hip hop)

They did a very good job and it was funny to see them perform on stage .

Finally they had looooong tombola (half an hour ) and I really won something! a little radio with alarm clock .

Afterwards we decided to take a look at the celebration at the vietnamese buddhist temple (Luat and his friend left us earlier to be there on time). Unfortunately we needed 45 min by public transport to get there but it was worth it, though we missed most of the program.

They turned the celebration room into a place to relax and chat and a lot of children played there:

 

I really like this relaxed handling of religion. Some of the monks very also there and enjoyed the celebration as well I think

In the entrance hall they offered some delicious food and also a live band, which played vietnamese hits (I suppose):

I finally got home happy and exhausted around 2 a.m. with the last train .

I will upload more pics to a photo album later on. Here they are.