倫敦BARNET市市長：從你們的文化中我們學到很多| #紀元英國 #EpochNewsUK

Thank you. I'm Alison Cornelius and currently this year I have the great privilege of being the Mayor of Barnet and the mayoral year runs from May to May so I've still got a few more months to go but this afternoon I've been invited very kindly to come to Stonegrove to this community centre, Goldsmiths Hall, where there's a wonderful celebration event coming up to your lunar new year this week which I believe is Tuesday, technically is the day. Do you know which year of the year? It's the year of the tiger, yes, and I was a rooster baby so I was the year of the rooster so it's the year of the tiger. So obviously it's lovely to wish everybody very happy and healthy lunar new year, year of the tiger, and I hope it's going to be a very successful one for everybody and it's lovely to be here. I've been talking to quite a number of people and obviously some have just come over. One lady I was speaking to has only been here for seven months and a lot of people have been here for 20 years or so so it's a good mix of those who have been here for some time obviously helping those who've just come over and it's lovely that everybody's trying to integrate with the community that's already here. I gather that a lot of people actually live in the Colindale area and although we're here in Stonegrove they've liked what they've seen coming in and I think that's lovely. There's obviously a connection with Colindale, has been for years, with the Asian community as a whole and that was obviously an obvious place where people would come when they first settled over here but as a borough we're very diverse. We have a lot of cultures, a lot of different religions living here and we seem to cohabit very peacefully which is extremely important for everybody who's lived here for years and also for everybody who's come over in the last however many years so thank you very much for interviewing me and have a very happy year of the tiger. Would you like to say a few words to our audience in Hong Kong? Okay all I can say is I have been to Hong Kong and probably not for the last 30 odd years funnily enough. I think the last time I was there I had a friend who went over to Hong Kong with her husband, he was an anaesthetist and he was working at a hospital over there for two or three years and I remember going all over the island and also part of the mainland and you know everybody was very welcoming wherever we went and it was a lovely country so I greet you all in Hong Kong and have a lovely year of the tiger again. Thank you, that's all right. You've always contributed when you've come over, the gentleman who's been here for 20 years, the person who's just been here the last seven months, you always do contribute to this country which is very important and we can learn so much from you and from your culture and equally we hope that you learn a lot from us in our culture and it's all about cohabiting and sharing the best of all our cultures to help us cohabit peacefully. Thank you.