It’s not often you get invited to break world records, sing karaoke or have tangerines thrown at you all in the same night… But, that’s exactly what the Chinese New Year celebrations at the Copthorne Tara had in store for some unexpecting eventprofs!

If you’re not lucky enough to spend it in Malaysia, this may be just the way you decide to spend your Lunar New Year from now on…

To celebrate 2015 and the year of the sheep, over 400 event professionals gathered in a suite at the Copthorne Tara Hotel in Kensington, London, last night. The event began at 6.30pm with tours of the hotel, presenting the number of facilities on offer, in an intimate group setting.

Whilst tours were taking place, drinks were flowing from the bar in the centre of the room with traditional Chinese style canapes (satay chicken, spring rolls and prawn toast) keeping hunger at bay.

Walking around the buzzing room you soon saw the fortune teller with a queue about 20 people deep, calligraphy and red Chinese lanterns spread across the ceiling. After an hour of chatting the hotel manager welcomed guests and asked everyone to go upstairs to one of the other suites.

Large round tables of ten filled the room and as guests were directed round, you soon realised this was going to be a group activity. Plates of salmon, dressings, large bowls of ingredients and chopsticks were there for making Lo Hei (or Yusheng), a traditional new year appetizer.

This enjoyable activity, popular in Singapore and Malaysia, involved teams mixing the ingredients whilst learning about the origins of the dish, and eventually tossing the salad in the air as high as possible, which is believed to reflects the height of the diner’s fortunes for the year. As you can guess… it got messy!

After that guests were invited to enjoy a Chinese dinner, dragon dancing and karaoke, all followed by goody bags for the way home. An entertaining night all round for the events industry, if only Peter Andre ‘Mysterious Girl’ could have been missed off the karaoke list!