The Lunar Year of the Dragon's offerings of strength, luck and prosperity were welcomed in with colour, style and flamboyance across the weekend, with Dickson's Woolley Street precinct thronging with thousands of people and celebratory activities.
Around 200 performers took to the street stage for a 12-hour entertainment program which began on Friday night and continued through Saturday.
Highlights from the program included a performance of 'The Story of the Zodiac', as well as routines from Canberra Prosperous Mountain Dragon and Lion Dance, traditional performances by the Federation of Chinese Association, K-Pop dancers, and roving Kung Fu martial art demonstrations.
Dance, balloon, and calligraphy workshops were also held throughout the day.
A three-metre tall wooden dragon sculpture designed by Canberra's Koitoya studio was unveiled in the street's refurbished central plaza to mark the arrival of a new animal in the Chinese zodiac.
The Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year has deep cultural and traditional roots in China, where it is used as a holiday time for family reunions, and to pay respect to ancestors.
Often described by anthropologists as "the biggest human migration event on earth", across China hundreds of millions of people leave their cities and places of work during the extended travel period known as chunyun in order to visit their families in more rural parts of the country.
According to the Chinese Ministry of Transport, around 1.8 billion trips will be taken - mostly by train, but also air and road - between regions in China from January 26 through to March 5, and is certain to set a new record high for internal travel within the country and nearly triple the pre-pandemic level of 2019.
Consumer spending peaks in China at this time as people buy gifts and have family banquets.
