Happy new year

NEXT THURSDAY is the first day of the 4,709th year of the Chinese calendar.

To celebrate, Dublin City Council is staging a two-week festival including a carnival, dragon and lion dances, martial arts displays, a performance by the Chinese State Circus and a Chinese film festival.

It’s a sign of just how vibrant and important this thriving community is — but the capital won’t be alone in celebrating the Year of the Rabbit. Cork was twinned with Shanghai in 2005. In South Belfast, Anna Lo of the Alliance Party was the first ethnic Chinese-born person to be elected to a legislative parliament in Europe when she entered the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2007.