HONG KONG (AP) — At Lunar New Year, red holds the promise of luck and reunion — a color meant to call people home and carry wishes for the year ahead.

It sits at entrances and lingers along walls. It threads through wishes and wraps around food. In smoke, it lifts and thins into the air.

Across much of Asia — where the festival is known as the Spring Festival, Tet, or Seollal — the new year is marked by rituals long believed to gather people against darkness and draw good fortune near. This year’s festival begins the Year of the Horse, one of the twelve animals in the Chinese zodiac.

These photographs follow the color red from public celebrations to smaller, everyday spaces.

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