In the weeks before Chinese New Year, families spring-clean their homes from top to bottom. The old year's dust gets swept away to make room for good luck. New clothes - often red - are bought. Shops sell sticky rice cakes, mandarin oranges, sweets and biscuits.
On New Year's Eve, the whole family gathers for a big dinner together. Grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins - everyone in one room. The next day, children visit their relatives wearing their new clothes and are given small red envelopes called hongbao, with a bit of money inside, for good luck in the new year.
Singapore's Chinatown is the most exciting place to be. Streets are hung with thousands of red lanterns. Lion dance troupes - two people inside a colourful lion costume, jumping and bowing to drumbeats - perform outside shops and offices. The lion is welcomed in, fed a lettuce, and 'spits out' good fortune in return.
The whole festival ends 15 days later with the Lantern Festival, where children carry paper lanterns and eat round, sticky rice-balls called tangyuan. Round shapes everywhere - lanterns, oranges, dumplings - because a circle means 'together, with no gaps'.