New Year 2020 celebrations kick off across the world

New Zealand's New Year party is taking at Sky Tower in Auckland.

WORLD (Dunya News) - The New Year celebrations have already kicked off in different parts of the world as countries including New Zealand and Australia welcomed 2020 with alluring fireworks and lively celebrations.

While many have honoured the occasion with colourful fireworks and street parties, others mark the new year with religious traditions.

NEW ZEALAND

Thousands gathered around Auckland’s Sky Tower, where for the first time lasers and animations accompanied the fireworks display to take New Zealand into the new year and a new decade.

According to New Zealand Herald, New Year celebrations were in full swing down at Federal St in Auckland’s CBD, as the fireworks explode from the Sky Tower. New Zealand has entered 2020 and a new decade with fireworks and huge celebrations in Auckland and Wellington.

Others gathered at Silo Park, Bastion Pt and Mt Eden while on the North Shore, Bayswater Marina, Devonport’s Mt Victoria and Queens Parade also offer good vantage points, along with Harbour View Beach Reserve on the Te Atatū Peninsula.

Thousands were in the central city to party at Federal St or dance through to the new year at one of three Britomart Block Party clubs from closer to the waterfront.

Auckland’s Harbour Bridge put on a dazzling light show syncing with Sky Tower’s midnight fireworks. Thousands of revellers on the waterfront watched brightly coloured fireworks and laser lighting shooting into the night sky over the city’s harbour.

According to TVNZ, the Sky Tower lit up with 3,500 effects and required two tonnes of equipment and 14 kilometres of cabling.

A light show on the Auckland Harbour Bridge also burst into life to accompany the fireworks display.

AUSTRALIA

Australia‘s largest city usually put on a dazzling display of pyrotechnics over the glittering harbour but this year‘s celebrations have been overshadowed by calls to cancel the fireworks as devastating bushfires rage across the country.

Millions of people began ringing in 2020 with fireworks, dancing and party in Sydney.

Large crowds thronged Sydney harbor to watch Australia‘s famous New Year‘s Eve fireworks, even as smoke turned the evening sky in nearby coastal towns blood-red.

The first of two Sydney firework displays kicked off at 9.15pm local time with a few hours still to go until the midnight display in the city.

The planned spectacle went ahead despite calls from some members of the public for the fireworks to be cancelled in solidarity with fire-hit areas in New South Wales (NSW).

JAPAN

People flocked to temples and shrines in Japan, offering incense with their prayers to celebrate the passing of a year and the first New Year’s Eve of the Reiwa era.

Under Japan’s old-style calendar, linked to emperors’ rules, Reiwa started in May, after Emperor Akihito stepped down and his son Naruhito became emperor. Although Reiwa is entering its second year with 2020, Jan 1 still marks Reiwa’s first New Year’s, the most important holiday in Japan.

Other stalls sold fried noodles and candied apples, as well as little figures and amulets in the shape of mice, the zodiac animal for 2020. Since the Year of the Mouse starts off the Asian zodiac, it’s associated with starting anew.

The first year of the new decade will see Tokyo host the 2020 Olympics, an event that is creating much anticipation for the capital and the entire nation.

HONG KONG

Thousands of Hong Kongers welcoming 2020 on neon-lit promenades in the picturesque Victoria Harbour broke into pro-democracy chants shortly after the countdown to midnight.

Hong Kong authorities canceled the main midnight fireworks display for the first time in a decade, citing security concerns. A “Symphony of Lights” took place instead, involving projections on the city’s tallest skyscrapers, while smaller-scale pyrotechnics were launched from waterfront rooftops.

Hong Kong’s turbulence shows no sign of abating in 2020, with the new year marked by rallies showing continued resistance against Beijing’s tightening grip over the financial hub.

Protesters were emboldened by hundreds of pro-democracy legislators who were elected in a landslide victory in district council polls in late November. The local lawmakers, who take office on New Year’s Day, will buoy a grassroots political movement that’s already sparked dramatic clashes, battering Hong Kong’s economy, decimating its retail and tourism sectors, curbed new investments and even challenged the city’s richest tycoons.

While some indicators show signs of recovery, raising the specter that relative calm over the holidays might mean the worst is over, the city is still facing sustained political and economic volatility as it heads into 2020. The new year was already expected to get off to a tense start with a march planned for Wednesday by the Civil Human Rights Front, the organizer of some of Hong Kong’s biggest protests.

INDONESIA

The New Year is being celebrated in countries including Thailand and Vietnam. Tens of thousands of revelers in Indonesias capital of Jakarta were soaked by torrential rains as they waited for New Year’s Eve fireworks.

But it did not stop the people from celebrating the arrival of 2020.

MALAYSIA

Fireworks explode above Petronas Twin Tower during New Year s Eve celebrations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

CHINA

President Xi Jinping delivered a New Year speech in Beijing to ring in 2020, pledging to achieve the first centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects in the "milestone" year.

"Let’s seize the day and live it to the full," Xi said, as celebrations were well underway including a spectacular party at Shougang Industrial Park, one of the venues for the Beijing 2022 Olympics.