Street vendors sell pig-shaped balloons to mark the Chinese new year in Hong Kong. Photograph: Mike Clarke/AFP/Getty Images
While for many of us February 18 is just an ordinary Sunday, for hundreds of millions of people around the world it marks the start of the year of the pig under the Chinese lunar calendar.
As well as the usual goings on -- firecrackers, huge crushes on the trains in China as hundreds of millions of migrant workers return home -- the lunar new year also brings mystical predictions as to what the next 12 months could bring.
Newspapers and agencies in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and elsewhere have, as ever, been busy consulting astrologers and feng shui masters for tips.
Others, however, are listening to the advice of another type of expert: economists.
The year of the pig is considered a notably auspicious time to have a child, especially this year, a so-called "Golden Pig" year which happens only once every 60 years. Children born in such a year are thought to be particularly fortunate with money and business.
This is expected to spark a baby boom in mainland China, with a spin-off in wedding and other activity. Additionally, the year is considered a generally favourable time for commerce all round.
Could all this help push China's already fevered economy into full-blown overheating? Although economic growth is forecast to dip below 10% this year, some warn that the country's thirst for raw materials and a booming, often speculative property market, could spell trouble.
Luckily, according to experts, the year of the pig might have some effect, but not a notably significant one.
"My theory is that it is likely to make no more than a marginal difference," Nick Kwan, head of Asian economic research for Standard Chartered bank in Hong Kong, told me.
The last lunar "boom year", the year of the dragon, which began in January 2000, ended up having a minimal effect on economies around Asia, he noted, adding:
"I think the Chinese economy is overheating anyway, although only in a very selective way. For it to get worse will probably take another year or two.
"Will the government intervene? I think definitely they will do something this year, but not so much because of the year of the pig, but because it's the year before the Olympics, and the year of the Party Congress -- these factors will be much more important for economic activity."
