chinese new year in chinatown chinese new year 2020
Chinese New Year, also referred to as Lunar New Year, is the festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunar calendar. The festival is usually referred to as the Spring Festival in Greater China, and is one of several Lunar New Years in Asia
Binondo is the "Chinatown" district in Manila. It became the center of commerce during the American occupation. Many of Binondo's commercial establishments were destroyed after World War II, with companies moving to Makati, one of the financial capitals of the Philippines.
Ongpin Street cramped, noisy but an experience.
Binondo remains the authentic Chinese enclave of Manila and Ongpin Street, running centrally through it, is the showcase for all things Chinese and traditional.
Winding along for ten jam-packed city blocks, Ongpin is glitz and glitter, traditional and exotic and an assault on the eardrums.
This happy Chinaman’s mishmash offers up everything you never thought you needed but could not find in shopping malls: jewelry shops selling nothing but high-carat gold, Chinese fast food cheek-by-jowl with restaurants that consider a twelve-course “lauriat” lunch frugal, aquaria of live fish and crustaceans you can dig your chopsticks into a scant quarter-hour later, modern hardware shops alongside traditional apothecaries (it’s wrong to call them herbal drug stores as the freshly-squeezed cobra bile served over the counter quickly tells you), Chinese fireworks (alright, they’re made in Taiwan), CD’s of Chinese movies, bakeries, medium rise short-time hotels where the room rate includes a girl, and on and on. And don’t ask what those live iguanas are doing tethered on the sidewalks, they will be gone by dinnertime.
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