Video: New Year's in Tokyo, Taipei, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Sydney, Manila, Seoul, and Auckland

by Charlie Smith on December 31st, 2013 at 1:21 PM

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Auckland, New Zealand, is 21 hours ahead of Vancouver, but because it's in the southern hemisphere, there's not much hope of it hosting any polar-bear swim.

However, it has already celebrated New Year's Eve. So has Australia and Asia.

Below, you can see videos of the fireworks displays in several cities.

Sydney is 19 hours ahead of Vancouver, whereas Tokyo is 17 hours ahead. Taipei, Shanghai, and Hong Kong were latecomers, with their midnight arriving one hour after the new year began in the Japanese capital.

If I were to select the most impressive video on YouTube so far, the winner has to be Taipei. It was chosen by CNN in 2012 as one of the world's top 10 destinations for ringing in the new year.

Celebrating the arrival of 2014 in Taipei, Taiwan.

This year, the 509-metre Taipei 101 tower was the centrepiece for a glittering fireworks display.

The Taipei 101 fireworks were streamed live on YouTube and featured performances by a host of Taiwanese stars, including Bii, Dream Girl, Janet, S.H.E, Luan Tan Ah Xiang, Wei Li An, Liu Zi Qian, Xia Yu Qiao, Yoga Lin, Lin Zhi Sheng, Yang Dai Kang, Rainie Yang, Hao Jiao Xiang Qi, Wilber Pan, Hebe, Chairman, Lan Xin Mei, Xie Jin Yan, Guo Yan Wen, and David Tao.

The Australian city of Sydney always puts on a grand show.

Shanghai celebrates the new year.

Fireworks go off in Hong Kong.

Party time in Tokyo to ring in the new year.

The sky lit up in Auckland, New Zealand.

Manila also went through a lot of fireworks.

The crowd enjoyed the show in Seoul, South Korea.

More of the New Year's Eve festivities from Taipei, Taiwan.

Comments

2 Comments

Rolf

Jan 1, 2014 at 2:35pm

nice that other places can have such extravagant celebrations. Here in Vancouver if we tried that, we would have hooligans, fights and possibly a riot. How sad are we.