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On Sunday 10 February, thousands of people are expected to make their way to Newcastle's Chinatown to help welcome in the Year of the Rat, with entertainment including lion and dragon dancers bringing the streets to life.

The Chinese New Year celebrations have become a popular fixture in the city's calendar of events, but how do they compare to those in China and how does it feel for young Chinese people in the region to be so far from home at this time?

Chinatown will come alive on 10 February 2008

Family time

Liang Kun, from Shanxi province in China, and Wong Pang-ying, from Yuenlongi in Hong Kong, are both currently living in Gateshead.

They say that the celebrations in Hong Kong would be quite different to those in mainland China, but that family would be one of the most important elements for both of them.

"Because some of the relatives are not seeing each other [all year] they take this opportunity to visit them and say hello to each other and see how they are doing," says Pang-ying, who works in transportation planning in Newcastle.

"My dad is from south China so each year we go to his home village to visit his friends and his family. So I visit my cousins. I don't see them more than once a year because it's quite far."

Kun's experience is similar. "If I was home I would be going to my father's home town, where he grew up, which is a kind of small village in my province," she says.

"We travel like six hours by car every year.

"For me, like most mainland Chinese families, it's one child so we actually don't have brothers and sisters, so cousins are for me almost like brothers and sisters."

The Lunar New Year holiday is the only time some Chinese people get to see their families, particularly migrant workers who travel back from the cities where they work to their home villages.

Lucky food

As with most festivals, food also plays an important role, though Pang-ying says it doesn't always taste that good.

"People eat things to symbol good fortune and most of the ingredients are put together not because of the taste but because of the meaning, so it doesn't taste good to me. But it's only once a year."

"In the north and south they eat differently at Chinese New Year," adds Kun. "In the south they eat like rice cakes and in the north they eat dumplings.

"When I was a kid after every Chinese New Year I just got sick because every day we eat different food and we eat too much," she laughs.

Both Pang-ying and Kun say they have noticed Chinese New Year get more and more commercialised over the years, a bit like Christmas has in the UK.

Celebrations in Newcastle in 2007

"It's more traditional in villages. In my province development is quite slow - that's how we kept most of the traditions," says Kun.

Far from home

But what about the Lion dance that regular visitors to the Newcastle event will know well?

"In the south of China there's more lion dancing," explains Kun. "It's because of the immigration. Chinese immigrants here, most of them are from the south of China so they are doing this tradition."

She thinks people in Newcastle would probably find the way she celebrates the New Year at home boring compared to the acrobatics and dancing around Stowell Street.

Pang-ying is heading back to Hong Kong for a few weeks over the New Year but Kun is staying in England. And, though she's not quite sure how she will be celebrating yet, she says she would feel more homesick if she was in a different part of China and not at home than she does so many thousands of miles away.

Find out more about what's going on in Newcastle on 10 February by clicking on the link below.