New York City's annual Lunar New Year Flower Market was opened at Columbus Park in lower Manhatten on February 16, two days prior to the Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on February 18 this year.

Organized by the Museum of Chinese in the Americas (MoCA), United East Athletic Association (UEAA), and Asian American Arts Alliance, this pre-Lunar New Year event bursts with auspicious plants and blossoms presented by local florists, and fuses Chinese traditional arts, such as face painting, Chinese knotting, paper cutting and calligraphy.

It also features a lively stage program including magician show, fortune teller performance and Chinese operas. Celebrations will last for 15 days afterwards.

According to the organizers, last year's Flower Market attracted a diverse, multi-generational audience of 150,000 visitors over two days.

MoCA and UEAA were the first organizations to introduce the Lunar New Year Flower Market to New York in 2004 in celebration of the holidays.

The flower is one of the most important and symbolic decorations, because "fa" in Cantonese shares homonymic qualities to the word for fortune, "fat." Therefore, many Chinese believe that having flowers blooming in one's home during the New Year is a prosperous and fortuitous sign.

(Chen Wen, Beijing Review, reporting from New York)