The last few days have been incredibly busy celebrating Chinese New Year. Visiting people and collecting red packet is hard work! After collecting red packets, the second thing I enjoyed most were ironically the flowers, which I never paid much attention to before.

Every year in Hong Kong, impromptu flower markets pop up to sell flowers and random specialty items, very much like how in the States you have random Christmas themed farmer markets. They open around the week before CNY and end on CNY. Most people go in the last few nights when it opens really late (like past midnight late- us HKers are a nocturnal bunch), when it’s absolutely packed. They say that just walking around the market will bring you good luck in the new year. So I must be VERY lucky this year, since I went to the flower market TWICE (it’s a loooong story). But anyways, this is where the flowers generally come from, though you can find them in flower shops too.

It doesn’t look too exciting when you’re at the flower market because  there are so many of them they all start looking the same. But once it get’s home, aren’t they so very very pretty? Each flower represents some kind of good luck, though I’m not sure of the details on that front. The names going clockwise from the top left to the best of my knowledge: a) Japanese orchids (they’re a new breed this year and I LOVE how it looks) b) some sort of red sword orchids? c) bells, because they dangle downwards and looks like a bell d) cherry blossoms, which is suppose to bring love. I think these might actually be better than a Christmas tree because of their many variety and vibrant colors!

In the spirit of the lunar year, many places made special Tiger items to commemorate the year. I paid special attention this year, since the Tiger is my favourite. Prada came out with a Tiger collection that frankly does not look very cute or pretty. But I do think that this Tiger from Swarovski is pretty awesome. Maybe even better than the Dragon one they had back in 2000 to celebrate the millennium.

Happy Year of the Tiger everyone!