?Ebony Steel­band and por­tray­als from the Lon­don-based Ma­hogany mas band fea­tured in the 15th an­nu­al Chi­nese New Year cel­e­bra­tions–The Year of the Tiger– held in Hong Kong be­tween De­cem­ber 12-17. Ebony Steel­band played David Rud­der's Ca­lyp­so Mu­sic, while Ma­hogany's pre­sen­ta­tion of the Win­ter was a big hit on a damp Sun­day night pa­rade at Hong Kong's Cul­tur­al Cen­tre. The band was pop­u­lar among the large crowd which saw the char­ac­ters por­tray­ing sev­er­al as­pects of the win­ter sea­son in the Unit­ed King­dom as part of the over­all pro­gramme that fea­tured the four sea­sons, name­ly win­ter, spring, sum­mer and au­tumn.�

LEFT: ?Floats from Ma­hogany mas band on pa­rade at the Chi­nese

New Year cel­e­bra­tions at the Hong Kong Cul­tur­al Cen­tre.

The pa­rade was de­scribed by Hong Kong Tourism Board (HK­TB) ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor An­tho­ny Lau as one the world's scin­til­lat­ing spec­ta­cles. It was a fu­sion of east­ern and west­ern el­e­ments, a pro­ces­sion of fan­tas­tic floats, colour­ful lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al per­form­ers, all of which were well re­ceived by the spec­ta­tors. On the in­ter­na­tion­al, lev­el there were pre­sen­ta­tions from Ko­rea, Italy, France, Switzer­land, Japan, Rus­sia, Bel­gium, Thai­land and UK. The HK­TB held a re­cep­tion for the in­ter­na­tion­al per­form­ing groups and float spon­sors at the Prince Restau­rant, where Lau dis­closed that the fes­ti­val start­ed 15 years ago and ex­pressed the view that the pa­rade has now be­come the city's home grown tra­di­tion.

He thanked the in­ter­na­tion­al groups for their par­tic­i­pa­tion and not­ed that the fes­ti­val al­so en­joys a glob­al rep­u­ta­tion as a "must see" event in Hong Kong. Lau was pre­sent­ed with sev­er­al gifts from the in­ter­na­tion­al groups, in­clud­ing T&T. Ash­ton Ford, At­tache at the T&T High Com­mis­sion in Lon­don pre­sent­ed the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor with in­ter­na­tion­al­ly fa­mous An­gos­tu­ra Rum 1824, minia­ture pan and oth­er items de­pict­ing T&T as the pi­o­neer of Car­ni­val and home of the steel­band and ca­lyp­so.�There were oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties, such as fire­works, horse rac­ing and cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties through­out Hong Kong. The Not­ting Hill group made a spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tion at the Won­der­ful Worlds of Wham­pa in the town of Hung Hom.