Chinese New Year Manchester

Today saw celebrations across Manchester City Centre, marking Chinese New Year – and what celebrations they were!

Manchester always does things like this very well. It’s lively, with enough going on that you feel part of something big. But it’s accessible, well-managed and easy to get around. We drove into the town-centre, parked up and within 30 minutes of leaving the front door, were amidst the street party.

The beautiful red Chinese lanterns adorned the streets, off-set beautifully against today’s bright blue skies. There’s a dragon parade, which we managed to catch the start of at the Town Hall on Alberts Square and then the middle of after we’d lunched in China Town. There’s lots of street-food, stalls, gifts and music too, taking over China Town. There was such a great atmosphere and the smells coming from the street-food was mouth-wateringly good.

Today’s celebrations in Manchester culminate in a fireworks display at 6pm. Unfortunately we couldn’t hang out that long, but I’m sure it will be quite a site to behold.

Here’s some of the dragon parade and stalls…

We hit China Town right on time for lunch and snuck our way into an already busy Dim Sum restaurant called the New Emperor (with lots of Chinese families – good sign for good food). The place was packed with families, couples, Easterners and Westerners alike. The common ground being that everyone was hungry and keen to tuck into some serious grub.

Overwhelmed by the menu and the things we could see coming out of the kitchen, we ordered a selection of Dim Sum (some we knew we’d had before, some we knew we hadn’t) accompanied by Beef Brisket Chow Mein. Mmmm…

My personal faves were the Char Sui buns and the Har Kau (both pictured above) as well as the cripsy Vietnamese Spring Rolls.

Chinese is one of my favourite cuisines, so I was definitely in my element here and it was nice to be submerged amongst the Chinese culture in the middle of Manchester. It really makes you realise what a fantastic, cultural melting-pot we’re lucky enough to live in.

Did anyone else head into town to celebrate Chinese New Year? What did other cities do?

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