PM Modi greets Chinese people on their new year

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday greeted Chinese people on their New Year and wished them a happy and prosperous 'Year of the Pig.' "Dear friends, I wish you a happy New Year! May the Year of the Pig bring happiness, wealth and health to everyone," Modi wrote on his Chinese social media platform, Weibo.

Chinese people all over world bade farewell to the 'Year of the Dog' and welcomed the 'Year of the Pig' on Tuesday, ushering in the Lunar New Year with prayers and family feasts. It is also celebrated as Spring Festival. Chinese lunar calendar years are grouped into a 12-year cycle, with each year assigned an animal symbol: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.

Prime Minister Modi opened an account on Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform which is very popular in China, during his visit here in 2015 and continued to make use of it to interact with Chinese people. He has 182,291 followers on Weibo.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)