Actually, the traditional Mandarin greeting is: "Gong Xi Fa Ca!" which means 'here's wishing you prosperity!'

Then, on the first day of the new year people greet each other with “Guo Nian”.

Chronos the 2nd

A Happy New year to you too. Last night, and tonight my wife and I had and are having a Chinese dinner, at home - not take away`- as we usually do on Chinese New Year. I have had many good friends in the Chinese diaspora, mainly in Malaysia and Singapore. I admire their culture greatly,and their work ethic. I regret not leaning one of the Chinese languages, apart from the sheer difficulty, my friends are mostly Hokkien or Tou Chou ; local take aways are mostly Cantonese and the official language and that of Singapore, where I often used to visit , is Mandarin. Good for them they share a common written language.

Interesting to see so much interest in Chinese New Year. It is heartening for me as a British Chinese living here. Even more interesting is the mention of "Tou Chou" which is my dialect except that we pronounced it as Teo Chew, the main dialect in Singapore although most tend to speak Mandarin. Chinese over here are mainly Cantonese. So much so that when I first went to London's Chinatown in the late 60 's they said I was not Chinese simply because I could'nt speak it.

'I remember the crowds at the Railway Station'

My first trip to China was from Hong Kong. I was with a Hong Kong Chinese and we went into China on the ferry and back to Hong Kong on the train.

It was shortly before new year and my colleague thought it would be a jolly jape to take me onto the main station concourse before explaining that we would be leaving from the international departure area.