Asian communities welcome the Year of the Snake with dragon puppets and drum displays

Members of dragon dance club Naga Merah Putih (Red White Dragon) which is named after Indonesian national colors, practice as local residents watch in Bogor

Asian communities across Macau, Hong Kong, mainland China and the world will begin ringing in the Lunar New Year today, with 2025 designated as the Year of the Wooden Snake in the Chinese zodiac.

Fireworks, parades and other Lunar New Year rituals are centered around removing bad luck and welcoming prosperity.

From narrow side streets to packed malls, the traditional music and dance of dragon puppet performances have filled this bustling city south of Indonesia’s capital to usher in the Lunar

In Indonesia, where millions of people have Chinese ancestry, crowds gathered in the city of Bohor to watch as drummers interspersed around puppet performers display the traditional dragon and lion puppets, which stretched up to 65 feet long in interconnected segments held by about a dozen people walking beneath.

For weeks before the Lunar New Year festivities, the performance troupe — which can number anywhere from 50 to 100 people depending on how in-demand shows are — practice in the abandoned back area of a small storefront selling coffee and snacks. Women and children from around the area stop by to sit and watch. During slower weeks puppet heads sit unused on a storage shelf.

On Sunday, days before the start of the Lunar New Year, the troupe loaded puppets and performers into the back of a small truck and headed to a shopping mall for a performance. Those who couldn’t fit into the truck followed on motorbikes.

In the mall, hundreds of visitors gathered to listen to the drums and watch the dance of the performance troupe. Rounds of applause greeted the dance, while some in the audience placed “angpau” — an envelope containing money usually given during holidays or for special occasions — into the puppet’s mouth.

The biggest migration

China’s Lunar New Year travel rush has kicked into high gear, with billions of trips expected in coming days for the peak of the 40-day annual mass migration — the world’s biggest annual movement of humanity.

The actual new year holiday, which marks the start of the year of the snake in the 12-month lunar calendar, comes today, while New Year’s Eve on Tuesday is reserved for family gatherings and traditionally fireworks displays.

Many began travelling on Jan. 14 and the rush will reach a peak over the weekend. In total, 9 billion trips — mostly by car — are expected over the 40-day travel rush.

Trips by train will surpass surpass 510 million, with another 90 million travelling by air. The government didn’t say how the travel figures compared with any other 40-day period during the year.

Trips are now far more comfortable than in past years, when travelers often crammed into train cars for trips that could last days — if they were fortunate enough to buy a ticket, which are now mostly sold online.

Traditionally the festival has been a time for families to gather, with members of China’s huge migrant worker population using up all their vacation time on the annual visit that for many offers the only chance to see parents and children.

Rising prosperity and the decline in family customs in recent years has prompted those with the means to travel overseas, mostly to South East Asia, but also Japan and South Korea. Cross-border trips are expected to rise by nearly 10%, including foreign tourists willing to risk the crowds to take in the spectacle.

The government grants eight public holiday days from Jan. 28 to Feb. 4. While fireworks have been all but eradicated under President Xi Jinping, traditional events such as temple markets draped in auspicious bright red colors continue to draw visitors in their millions. MDT/AP