Happy Chinese New Year!

Today ushers in the Chinese/lunar new year. This year is the year of the ox.

There's been a coordinated campaign from the Chinese (which has been embraced by a lot of foreigners I know) this year to use the phrase, "Happy Niu Year!" See, the Chinese word for cow (and I suppose ox) is pronounced "niu." Niu sounds pretty close to "new." Hence the very cheesy phrase.

I refrained from putting this in today's post's title since it is so lame. Thought it was worth explaining on my blog though.

Hopefully this ox year will be a better year for China than the last one has been, the rat.