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Penang Chinese New Year Open House Miao Hui Celebration

Written by Nicholas Chan on March 7, 2009 – 12:07 am -

This is the Penang Chinese New Year Open House Celebration or more likely to be known as 庙会 miao4 hui4 to the local Chinese here. It had been a long month after this event and only now I got a little time to compile the photos and post it up here.

The Ox Year CNY Celebration happened on the 7th day of the Chinese Ox New Year and it’s one of a big celebration event in Penang. I attended the same thing the year before and this was my second time. It’s really fun but I should have go there earlier, so that I got more natural sunlight to take more photos. When it gets into dark, the sunset, it will become difficult to take pretty photos, moreover there’s so many people walking around.

This year was special because the whole event started on as early as 11am and ended at 12am. It had become a whole day event and attracted a lot of tourist, locals, and of course avid photographers, like me. =)

I went there at around 4pm by bus and I was there on my own at first. Only later then, I met up with some friends. So it’s me walking around alone at the whole celebration venue.

The whole event was divided many section, though I just walked to all the different sections, randomly. First thing was to see the Chingay performance on Pitt Street.

At there, I met Jeff Ooi, MP for Jelutong who was having a break to attend official event but to enjoy taking photographs himself. He is so cool for having two body, one for wideangle, one for telephoto (zoom). Real pro. There were really a lot of photographers there, like at the Chingay performance, there’s like more that 20 DSLR aiming at a man, preparing to take a good shot. I wonder the Chingay people will feel any pressure from all the camera aiming at them, or not?

It’s an event that’s about everything of the Chinese’ Culture, it’s not just a Chinese New Year celebration, but also like a cultural fair which introduces the Chinese Culture. From lion dancing, dragon dancing, Chinese Yoyo to Chinese chess, Chinese celebration, Chinese ethics, Chinese opera, Chinese food and whole lot more.

It’s just so much to see, so much to take (photos).

There’s also Chinese food making competition too. I saw a lot of high schoolers were part of the competition. For myself, I don’t even know there’s such competition.

There’s just so many people there. It’s so hard to move around when people were moving forward and in another direction at the same time which made up a people jam. Then people started shouting, “Don’t push, don’t push!”. It’s so annoying and damn hot.

We met our beloved Penang CM Lim Guan Eng, Uncle Lim too! He was there giving a speech on the date. There’s actually a controversy on this event before this, it’s all about the money problem. But it’s over right now so I don’t want to dig any old story up, furthermore, it’s a successful event. I think I shall cut this thing into half. It’s just that I still got so much photos to post. Have a nice day! See you next year.

Tags: armenian street, Big Event, Chinese New Year, CNY, CNY09, Crowded, Eveng, fun, georgetown, Happenings, Many People, Miao Hui, Nice, Penang, Pitt Street, UNESCO
Posted in Event, Penang | Comments

Walking along Armenian Street (Lebuh Armenian)

Written by Nicholas Chan on October 1, 2008 – 11:01 pm -

There’s three young-schooling-blogger-dslr-owner-and-photog-lovers together on a Saturday evening. It was before the start of the food blogger gathering at Edelweiss Cafe which is located on Lebuh Armenian or literally known as Armenian Street.

The street has a Chinese name and we, local call it 椰脚街 (mandarin:ye2 jiao3 jie1) or Ea Ka in hokkien which means the leg of a coconut tree.

It was early when we arrived there and the ‘we’ I am mentioning are myself, Alvin Yang and Yiphing. So, we went for a little walk along Armenian Street, it is a nice little street with a lot of old colonial building and there’s a Tua Pek Kong temple too which I have visited it for several times this year.

It’s a gang of young DSLR user and there’s two Canon machine and one Sony machine. I love Canon, I am happy with it even though Sony’s Alpha is getting cheaper and more powderful.

We didn’t get into the temple because there’s a little dinner held in its compound. Although it’s still open to public, we didn’t want to disturb those inside, they were celebrating the birth of God Tua Pek Kong.

That was a quiet evening. Not much car passed by, it’s like very peaceful neighbourhood. Wishing that I can have a little shop house there, broken all the walls inside to make it spacious, have a little New York style interior and I will be glad living in such place.

As years goes on, the value of these shop houses will go up because it’s part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Lucky for those who are already staying there.

I was bored at some times and I saw a lamp post or a pole. Climbed up like a monkey and I took some shots.

Georgetown has a lot of nice place to take photo. I think I am gonna plan my year end holidays activity, one of which will be a walk to all the UNESCO World Heritage listing site and then I am gonna take photo until the memory card goes burst. Hohoho.

Tags: armenian street, dslr, Photography, shoot
Posted in Lifelog, Photography | Comments