Year of the Water Dragon  begins today January 23, 2012, and ends on February 9, 2013. The year of the Dragon brings many  possibilities for good fortune. 
Days of colorful festivals, intense preparations, parades, dragon and  lion dances, fireworks display, visits to friends and relatives, and the  largest human migration around the world to travel home to attend  reunions culminated yesterday with the onset of the Chinese New Year,  also known as Spring Festival or Lunar New Year, the most important of  the traditional Chinese holidays.
 New Year’s Eve traditions were observed including the thorough  cleaning of homes, wearing of new clothes and shoes, opening of doors,  windows, and lights, getting a new haircut, cleaning and repainting of  altars, preparation of fruits believed to invite good fortune on tables,  and the repainting of doors and window panes. The color red, the emblem  of joy and prosperity and which is believed to scare away evil spirits  and bad fortune, was liberally used in painting and decorating.
 Lucky money in red envelopes were given to children, sweets were  served, while some bathed in boiled pomelo leaves for good health.
 The Eve of the Passing Year reunion dinners were also held serving an  abundance of food like fish, chicken, dumplings, nuts, noodles, and  sweets like the popular glutinous rice flour (tikoy) to symbolize  prosperity, abundance, longevity, and good fortune as well as in  thanksgiving for the blessings of the past year.
 The celebration of the Chinese New Year traditionally begins on the  first day of the first lunar month in the Chinese calendar and ends 15  days later with the observance of the Lantern Festival.
For the Chinese, dragons are the divine  mythical creatures that bring with them intense power, ultimate  abundance, and good fortune. 
In Sung dynasty manuscripts, the dragon is described as having the  “head of an ox or donkey, eyes of a shrimp, horns of a deer, body of a  serpent covered with fish scales, and a feet of a phoenix,” and it  usually clutches a pearl symbolic of its supernatural powers.
  To the Chinese, the dragon is born in the most desirable year and is  the mightiest of the signs.
The Oriental dragon is regarded as a divine  beast, the reverse of the monster that Westerners 
felt necessary to find  and slay. 
Free spirits of the Chinese zodiac, people born in the Year  of the Dragon are extroverts who have a deep love for nature and are  innovative, passionate, enterprising, brave, self-assured, colorful, and  flamboyant. Gifted and irrepressible, they are fearless of any  challenges that may come their way, able to see clear the paths and take  a radical approach to any harsh conditions.
  Of the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac, the dragon is the most special  and is sometimes called a karmic sign. Bigger than life is very much a  dragon thing and in this context we can expect grand things to happen  this year. There may be flames and failures, but there will also be  spectacular achievements. 
For those born in the Year of the Dragon, this  year is the time to pursue and act on the impossible dream, change the  world or at least your life. 
And for the other signs, it is the best  chance to make your dreams come true. The dragon sign is associated with  spring and the dragon water sign is likely to become a flowing river  rather than a stagnant lake, which means that you need to begin 2012 off  to a fast start as things are expected to happen early in the year. 
Hopefully we used some of the quiet time in the past year to plan your  moves for 2012.
 KUNG HEI FAT CHOY!