![\"\"](\"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/lunar2.jpg\")
Hundreds flocked to the centre to celebrate Chinese culture and the start of a prosperous year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Onlooker Lauren P\u00e9ng, 23, from Wadsley, said: \u201cIt\u2019s just so nice to see our culture celebrated in such a popular place. So many people from all backgrounds have come to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Foshan lion dance troupe continued celebrations with a performance in the city\u2019s Peace Gardens on Saturday and Sunday. The gardens were filled with music, parades and street food, a vast display of cultural appreciation for the Lunar Year beginning.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sheffield University also got involved with Reslife at the student hub – The Edge – providing free Chinese food for their student population so they could join in on the fun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
First year student Mia Jackson-Booth, 19, from Coventry, said: \u201cThere were a lot of different people there. There was a community atmosphere and we celebrated the Lunar New Year together.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lunar New Year marks the shift around the Chinese zodiac calendar, a 12-year cycle embodied by the animals: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig as well as intertwining the five elements of water, fire, earth, metal and wood.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The year of 2026 has been labelled as the Year of the Fire Horse due to the heavenly stem – one of the five elements – being Bing – Big sun and the Earthly branch (animals) being Wu – The Horse. This combination of Fire Horse dictates the year as being energetic and fast moving, a vibrant sign for 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sheffield galloped into the Year of the Horse as Lunar New year celebrations kicked off in the city. The 15-day spring festival celebrations started with events taking place in the city centre, Meadowhall shopping centre, University of Sheffield’s student hub:The Edge and many more.\u00a0 Meadowhall\u2019s Lunar celebrations lasted from Sunday 15 February to Friday 20 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":356,"featured_media":57551,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5,132,165],"tags":[1096,1097,12,213],"class_list":["post-57550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-news","category-top-stories","category-top-story-4","tag-lunar-new-year","tag-meadowhall","tag-sheffield","tag-university-of-sheffield"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/356"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57564,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57550\/revisions\/57564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/lunar3.jpg\")