Cuba's Chinese community celebrate Spring Festival

HAVANA, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- Cuba's Chinese community will mark Spring Festival, China's Lunar New Year and its people's most important annual holiday, with various activities lasting several days.

The celebrations include exhibitions of visual arts and traditional outfits at Arts and Traditions House in Havana's Chinatown, which neighbors the city's historic center, a UNESCO World Heritage site, organizers said Tuesday.

Preparations for the event started last Thursday, when people began decorating their homes and work places with traditional paper cuttings, Chinese lanterns and painted panels depicting springtime to welcome the Year of the Rat.

The celebrations for the Chinese New Year, which falls on Thursday, will wrap up with a gala called From Havana to Beijing at Havana's Sports City Coliseum Saturday.

It will feature a Taiji martial arts show, a lion dance as well as a procession of 800 Chinese martial arts students, the youngest aged three and the oldest 90.