Mumbai’s small Chinese community is celebrating their New Year on Saturday.
To usher in the New Year, the community gathered at the Kwan Kung temple in Mazgaon on Friday evening. New Year’s Eve at the temple was celebrated with a dragon dance.
Each Chinese New Year is assigned a zodiac sign, of which there are 12, symbolised by animals like dragon, rat, tiger, ox, pig, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, and dog. . This year is named after the dragon while 2023 was the Year of the Rabbit. The New Year in 2025 will be the Year of the Snake.
The Mazgaon temple was set up in the early 20th century when Chinese migrants from Canton (now called Guangzhou) came to the city as traders and artisans. Many also had migrated from Kolkata which had a large Chinese-origin population living in two Chinatowns.
Peter Liu, a Pune resident who was at the Mazgaon temple on Friday evening said that there are now fewer than 1000 people of Chinese origin staying in Mumbai. Most run restaurants, dental clinics, and hair salons. Many Chinese left for North America, Europe, and places after the Sino-Indian War in 1962. Liu said that most Chinese in the city are of Hakka and Cantonese ethnicities.
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