Fireworks as Asia rings in the Chinese New Year

Fireworks illuminated the skies across Asia and millions of families gathered together on Friday to usher in the Year of the Horse, kicking off a week of celebrations that included a performance by Braveheart actress Sophie Marceau on China's annual televised gala. Residents from China's small towns and villages to its sprawling megacities rang in the Lunar New Year, the country's most important holiday, by indulging in feasts of dumplings and rice cakes and exchanging hongbao, red envelopes stuffed with "lucky money". Many of them were among the hundreds of millions of people, including 245 million migrant workers, who had crammed planes, trains and buses to return to their hometowns in what is the world's largest annual human migration. Chinese communities across Asia also came together to celebrate, marking the holiday with flowers and offerings. Hong Kong was due to hold a massive fireworks display over Victoria Harbour on Saturday, the second day of the new year. The lunar calendar is based on the cycles of the moon and through Chinese folklore ascribes 12 animals, one for each year in the rotating cycle. The horse is in the seventh position. In China, the horse is traditionally associated with loyalty and energy, and is considered the second-most popular animal sign of the zodiac, after the dragon. The phrase for "at once" in Chinese literally means "on horseback", and some popular New Year cards this year have featured money, houses or cars on horseback, expressing the sender's wish of speedy good fortune for the receiver. This year, however, is set to be a dramatic one, according to Hong Kong feng-shui masters, as it is the Year of the Wood Horse -- incorporating the dramatic element of fire. Conflicts, disasters, record high temperatures, an economic chill in Asia and more trouble for pop star Justin Bieber all lie in wait this year, celebrity feng-shui master Alion Yeo told AFP earlier this week. On Thursday, Beijing was a cacophany of light and sound as residents took to the streets to light firecrackers -- traditionally believed to scare away evil spirits -- into the wee hours of Friday. But by morning, the capital was mostly quiet, as most of the migrant workers who comprise more than a third of its 20 million population had left the city to celebrate the new year in their ancestral homes. Beijing saw a slump in fireworks sales this year amid pollution concerns among residents and a move by city officials to cut the number of licensed firework retailers by 12 percent, the state-run China Daily reported. In additional to giving traditional hongbao, or red envelopes, some Chinese this year have taken to sending Lunar New Year money by smartphone. The popular mobile chat app WeChat, which has more than 600 million subscribers, this week introduced a new feature allowing users to send an electronic new year "envelope" of up to 200 yuan ($33), the China Daily reported.