Greater Bay Area residents gather in Shenzhen for innovative Spring Festival celebrations

The southern Chinese city of Shenzhen has launched a vibrant series of events that blend traditional culture with modern technology, drawing large crowds of people in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) to welcome the upcoming Chinese New Year here.

The Chinese New Year, also the Spring Festival, is China's most important traditional holiday, symbolizing reunion, joy, and new beginnings. The 2025 Chinese New Year will fall on Wednesday, marking the beginning of a Year of the Snake.

In the Qianhai area of Shenzhen, nearly 100 young people from the Greater Bay Area on Thursday came together to make and enjoy traditional delicacies including dumplings, also known as jiaozi, and tangyuan, a kind of round and sweet dumpling made of glutinous rice flour, symbolizing harmony and unity.

Hong Kong resident surnamed Ho expressed her enthusiasm for the event.

"This activity is wonderful! With the New Year approaching, it really brings out the festive spirit and helps strengthen our relationships," she said.

In the Luohu district of Shenzhen, innovative activities such as robotic calligraphy and drones displaying Spring Festival couplets, or Chunlian in Chinese, have attracted numerous visitors.

The city's flower markets are also bustling with GBA tourists, with a diverse array of flowers and decorations for sale.

"I'd like to buy some flowers carrying auspicious meanings to gift to my friends," said a local resident.

Currently, Shenzhen is hosting various Spring Festival events across its 11 districts, with around 4,000 flower market stalls in business.

The city has also rolled out nearly 600 promotional activities and numerous exciting travel products, drawing many residents from Hong Kong and Macao to celebrate the New Year in Shenzhen.

"In order to promote youth exchange and integration among Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao, we have invited young people who are having the New Year in Shenzhen to come together joyfully and immerse themselves in the charm of traditional Chinese culture," said Li You, an official with the Shenzhen Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League of China.

"This offers more young people from Hong Kong and Macao a glimpse into the development of our motherland through the Greater Bay Area, encouraging us to take part in national development," said Teng Chenghoi, a Hong Kong visitor.

Greater Bay Area residents gather in Shenzhen for innovative Spring Festival celebrations

The death toll from a landfill collapse in the central Philippine city of Cebu has risen to eight by Monday morning as search and rescue operations continued for another 28 missing people.

The landfill collapse occurred on Thursday as dozens of sanitation workers were working at the site. The disaster has already caused injuries of 18 people.

Family members of the missing people said the rescue progress is slow, and the hope for the survival of their loved ones is fading.

"For me, maybe I’ve accepted the worst result already because the garbage is poisonous and yesterday, it was raining very hard the whole day. Maybe they’ve been poisoned. For us, alive or dead, I hope we can get their bodies out of the garbage rubble," said Maria Kareen Rubin, a family member of a victim.

Families have set up camps on high ground near the landfill, awaiting news of their relatives. Some people at the site said cries for help could still be heard hours after the landfill collapsed, but these voices gradually faded away.

Bienvenido Ranido, who lost his wife in the disaster, said he can't believe all that happened.

"After they gave my wife oxygen, my kids and I were expecting that she would be saved that night because she was still alive. But the night came and till the next morning, they didn't manage to save her," he said.

Death toll in central Philippine landfill collapse rises to eight