Our family did not go back Kuching for Chinese New Year celebration this year. We are celebrating Chinese New Year here at our home.
Today is the first day of Chinese New Year. We woke up early and take our bath. After the tradition of wishing well to each others and Ang Pow giving by Alvin to the children, we went out for our breakfast and activity.
It is a bit quite celebrating Chinese New Year here in the city, all of the Chinese hawkers or eatery places are closed for at least a week for this holiday seasons, except all those huge Chinese Restaurants. Thus, there are not much choices except we go for Malay or Indian food, or the fast food in the shopping malls.
We were planning to go visit the renowned Chinese New Year lantern festival at Fo Guang Shan (FGS) Dong Zen Temple in Jenjarom later in the evening. Thus, we decided to be around Klang area so that about the time, we would able to travel to Jenjarom without any traffic jam.
We headed to the Aeon Mall Bukit Raja Klang. We were among the first batch of visitors there. Alvin bought the movie tickets of “The Black Panther” and we had our brunch at the Subway, before we went for the movie.
The children were so excited with all those rides machines for the toddlers in the shopping mall. Owh… I feel so funny looking at them, but how time flies they have grown up so much.
We window shopped for a while, then Alvin drove us towards to Jenjarom. It tool us almost 1 and half hour to reach to Dong Zen Temple. It was just nice that we parked our car at the road side, and by that time the area was getting crowded with cars and visitors.
We rested for a while in the car till 6.00pm. We visited the Dong Zen Temple Art Gallery with artefacts exhibition and a calligraphy hall, tea house, and strolling the Zen Garden.
There was a huge temporary tent set up to allow for the thousands of visitors for the delicious food stalls which were setting up for the fund raising event at the same time. We would have to satisfied with our food and just standing at the road side for our dinner.
After the quick bites, the timing is just right and the whole compound areas had been lighted up. It was beautiful. And again, very crowded and packed with people!
Dog takes center stage this year in conjunction with the Year of Dog. Dog is a loyal friend of man. Hence a giant lantern in the shape of dog at a height of 30 feet rotating at 360 degrees is the highlight of the festival.
A swan musical fountain at the entrance of the temple is another highlight not to be missed. Four giant lanterns signify Four Great Bodhisattva resembling compassion, wisdom, great vows and actions are at the fountain.
While Sichuan is famous for the "face changing" show, the facial masks are presented in another set of lanterns here.
Children's attention will invariably be caught by Disney World lanterns. Lanterns in the shapes of Dalmatian dogs, Winnie the Pooh are here to celebrate Chinese New Year too!
Our families spent around 2 hours and we left the temple around 8.00pm. There were still a lot of cars drove into the temple area and people keep coming in!
Well, I guess this would be the most people going for night to see the lantern festival in this prosperous and joyful seasons of Chinese New Year.
