Chinese New Year 2015: 4 things to know

Millions of people in Asia celebrated the Chinese New Year on Thursday, a festival that essentially shuts down the economy and sees a massive internal migration of Chinese back to their hometowns.

Here’s four things to know about the holiday.

Sheep, goat or ram?

There is some debate about whether it’s the year of the sheep, goat or ram. The character “yang” in Chinese can mean any of the three.

READ MORE: Year of the Sheep or Goat? Depends on who you ask

On Twitter, the term “Year of the Goat” seems to be slightly more popular at 26,500 tweets on the eve of the celebration. “Year of the Sheep” was about 1,000 mentions behind. “Year of the Ram,” however, is clearly the loser out of the three with just under 6,000 tweets.

WATCH: Carol Wang from Global National Mandarin joins Sophie and Steve to talk about Chinese New Year.

Unlucky

People born in the year of the sheep are considered to be gentle, shy and mild-mannered, but the year is also considered unlucky. This has caused some people to try to have their babies before the New Year.

The International Business Times reported that there was a huge increase in C-sections in the lead-up to the New Year. One doctor said he had 20 per cent more bookings during the last week before the celebration.

According to the Hong Kong government, the only year that projected a negative population growth rate in that region from 1988 to 2011 was 2003, the last Year of the Sheep.

READ MORE: How Lunar New Year celebrations in China impact the global economy

Large celebration

The Chinese government estimated that about 2.8 billion trips would be made in China during the seven-day festival. According to Bloomberg News, the number of people estimated to be travelling by train alone is six times larger the 46 million Americans who travelled during last year’s Thanksgiving.

As for what they were watching, CCTV projected that about 690 million people world-wide tuned in to see their annual New Year’s eve broadcast, almost five times the number of people who watched the Super Bowl.

READ MORE: Metro Vancouver Lunar New Year celebrations a time for tradition, family

In Canada and the world

There are 50 million Chinese people estimated to live outside of China. According to Statistics Canada, in 2011 there were about a million and a half people of Chinese ancestry in Canada, mostly living in Ontario and in British Columbia.

Major cities in Canada like Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Regina all have events to mark the festival.