The Year of the Rabbit

As you all know, the 3rd February is the start of the 2011 Chinese New Year (the Year of the Rabbit will apparently be peaceful, very welcome after the Year of the Tiger) so let’s see what there is on the Westminster Council website to help us celebrate!

First up is the Chinese New Year celebration in, well, Chinatown. If you go the Westminster Council homepage just search for ‘Chinese New Year’. The first result takes you to the What’s On page which reveals that the new year celebrations will be on Sunday 6th February. There’s a link to the London Chinatown homepage which has plenty of information about what’s going on in the area and the traditions surrounding the event.

Incidentally, if you redo your search for Chinese New Year in the council webpage’s search engine, the fourth result is a handy calendar of religious festivals from the Westminster Faith Exchange.

Not everyone will be able to go to Chinatown so why not have a little Chinese New Year celebration of your own with some appropriate food? No, not a take-away but some proper Chinese home-cooking. Here the Westminster Libraries Gateway comes into its own. Go to the section on Home and Garden and scroll down to Food and Drink. First port of call is the BBC Food page. If you click on the Recipes link you can search by Occasion (there are 16 special recipes for Chinese New year), Cuisine (148 Chinese recipes) or by chef - and for those of us of a certain age, Chinese chef means Ken Hom who has 33 recipes listed ranging garlic chicken with cucumber to steamed ginger fish with egg-fried rice. Or you could do an Advanced Search to check out individual ingredients – pak choi or tofu or duck perhaps.

While you’re doing all this cooking, why not listen to some Chinese music to get you in the mood? Choose the Music link on the Gateway and go to the Naxos music library (you may be asked to type in your library card number). Use the drop-down link to Genres and there is a selection of Chinese music – orchestral as well as folk and traditional. Just create your own playlist and enjoy.

And last, but certainly not least, don’t forget that we have a Chinese library on Charing Cross Road  which has knowledgeable staff and a collection famous throughout London.

Happy New Year!