In pics: Chinese communities around the world welcome Year of the Pig

Chinese communities around the world welcomed the Year of the Pig on Tuesday, ushering in the Lunar New Year with prayers, family feasts and shopping sprees.

In mainland China over the past week, hundreds of millions of people have crammed into trains, buses, cars and planes to reach family and friends in the world's largest annual migration, emptying the country's megacities of much of the migrant workforce.

The most important holiday of the Chinese calendar marks the New Year with a fortnight of festivities as reunited families wrap dumplings together and exchange gifts and red envelopes stuffed with money.

Pigs symbolise good fortune and wealth in Chinese culture and this year's holiday brings a proliferation of porcine merchandise, greetings and decorations.

During the Spring Festival season — a 40-day period known as 'Chunyun' — China's masses will be on the move, chalking up some three billion journeys, Chinese state media reported.

In Hong Kong, flower markets were filled with residents picking out orchids, mandarins and peach blossoms to decorate their homes — with stalls also boasting a dizzying array of pig-themed pillows, tote bags and stuffed toys.

Thousands of incense-carrying petitioners, some dressed in pig costumes, crammed into the city's famous Wong Tai Sin temple overnight, a popular location to mark the first prayers of the New Year.

In Shanghai on the mainland crowds packed into the Longhua temple to pray for good fortune.

In Malaysia — where 60 per cent of the population is Muslim, and a quarter ethnic Chinese — some shopping centres chose not to display pig decorations, while some shops kept them inside.

But shoppers and traders said that was usual in a country where the Muslim majority are sensitive about an animal considered unclean in Islam, and overall there had been little controversy this year.

Next door in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country which also has a sizeable ethnic Chinese population, the Lunar New Year is a public holiday.

Events such as traditional lion dances are held in decorated public spaces while supermarkets stock up on mooncakes and tangerines.

In Japan, the capital's famous Tokyo Tower was due to turn red in celebration of the New Year — a first for the city.

It is also the most important holiday in Vietnam, where it is celebrated as Tet. 

Parades and lion dances in Western cities such as New York and London were expected to draw large crowds.