It's the Year of the Dog

Really. Happy Chinese New Year. Not that I'm Chinese. However, I was invited to a Chinese Lion Dance yesterday. Good thing I went as they needed someone to video tape the dance.

Mom takes classes in Tai Chi. Her instructor, or "seifu" is from China and a wonderful person. He and some of his premiere students (he also teaches Hop Gar, and a couple of other forms) will generally spend the weekends in February performing the Lion Dance. The Lion Dance is a ceremony designed to scare away evil spirits and bring prosperity to the place, or people, the dance is performed for. In this case, it was a Chinese restaraunt near where I live. Both my parents and my sister came from out of town, as well, to watch and I got to be the "native guide" so to speak.

It was freakin cold and windy, and the local Caucasians were all confused and nosy. That's to be expected in that area. The ceremony involved about 2000 firecrackers, a drum, two sets of cymbals, a trident, a head of cabbage, and of course, the Lion. The firecrackers, the drums and cymbals, and the cabbage are used to lure the Lion to the place of the ceremony. After the firecrackers finish, the Lion "eats" the cabbage and tours the crowd. If the Lion spits cabbage on you, it will bring you luck and prosperity. The Lion is then guided into the place of business where he needs to make one complete trip around the place and is then allowed to leave. Drums and cymbals going the whole time. And this ceremony was performed at 12:30 on a Sunday...so there were plenty of confused Westerners in the restaraunt at the time. Hee, hee.

Apparently, the restaraunt owners really appreciated the Lion Dance because we all got a free lunch...even those of us that showed up mostly to watch. And I think I did a pretty good job with the video. I should find out later when Dad reviews the tape to copy for the class...and we can hear the audio.

Now that I think of it, they may want to delete some of that audio...I had a running commentary about some of the idiotic things the confused Westerners in their oversized capitalist pig vehicles were doing as they drove by, or sometimes through, the ceremony.