Lion Dance Story time

For the last 15 minutes of every class I teach at First Baptist Church I have a sort of story time.

Usually I show a form or some sort of cultural aspect of Kung Fu. My Sifu would have this too. It was not structured into class. It was after clas, or after dinner, late in the night. The traditional Kung Fu teachings are somewhat unstructured. Doing the basics and drills, that's structured, but a lot of the teaching is based around village life. If the village was preparing for some sort of fighting  (Feuding between villages or a rebellion) then they might function like an army. But otherwise it wasn't as structured.

(photo Credit: Kristen Paulson-Nguyen)

Pictured above. Vinh Nguyen and me in the lion head

So you could see that at our school. Many students commented that it was after class that the real learning took place.


I wanted to capture some of that but still fit it into by 1 hour class.
I figure 45 minutes is enough of physical exercise at a time.


Since it is Chinese New Year season, I told the story of the Nian and the lion dance.

The way people got under the head brought back some confidence that one day, we can parade the adult lion head in JP for Chinese New Year.

This particular head was from Woo Ching White Crane. I remember when we got it new. It was actually much smaller than the other heads we had. Now it is probably considered to be on the bigger side.

Jing had named it Mook Lan (Mu Lan) actually, I think his niece had named it that and maybe because Mulan had just come out. The two other heads, which were Federation heads, I don't know what happened to them. But they were named Mook Siu and Yerng Siu. (Yerng siu means ugly) by the same niece. In retrospect, that's probably a bad name for Lion heads, and part of that was those lion heads were not favorites. But actually thinking back, they looked pretty nice, it's just that the style of lion heads were starting to change. Factories were moving from cloth mache to paper. And.. this lion head I have to keep in the attic because it attracts moths. Why? Because the fur is not imitation. It is actual rabbit fur. Come to think of it, this might have been the year of the rabbit when we got it. So that means this head is around 18 years old.

I think this lion is happy to be able to come out and move around a little instead of sitting alone in the attic. Maybe next year he will be in a parade.... or maybe he can be in the Wake Up the Earth Parade!