Nonetheless the bamboo grew and grew until it was a bamboo forest and the group mind if the bamboo forest connected with the bamboo bridge.
The portal to the bamboo bridge became a bamboo hut and in the bamboo hut lived the Crane Shaman, who also went by Kong Ming. This just didn't look like much but it was so powerful that pretty much everyone could see it and it attracted a lot of attention. Kong Ming taught fortune telling, Feng shui, and swordsmanship while his wife taught Tai Chi and Jiu Jitsu. All sorts of people began to study at this bamboo hut.
In fact the Kung Fu teachers that had taught at Plum Mountain had originally come out of this school. Of all the things that they taught, lion dance was not one of them. And so after a while, someone reached out to me about teaching lion dance at the Bamboo hut.
Joyce was excited about this, especially now that we had the Black Lion, and wanted to recapture here early days of lion dance with a sisterhood of Asian female lion dancers... and me drumming.
But at first none of the women would sign up. Some were interested but didn't have time. Some had time, but openly said to Joyce that lion dance was unwomanly.
So we extended the class to all Asians.
A lit of Asians said they already knew lion dance and that they were already part of 4 C lions with Kai and Mo Yung...and that there was a co conflict of interest. Others said that lion dancing was for children. Othe world asked who was teaching the class. Then they said openly in Mandarin what a woman and a white guy knew about lion dance? I responded that I was half Chinese. And they laughed that that was not possible.
Finally one woman and one man did join. The woman was Chinese and we spoke in Chinese which was difficult for Joyce. During the first class we used a practice head that had been a hand me down.
"Do you have a black head?" Asked the woman.
"Yes... actually we do."
"Would you be willing to bring the black head to do a lion dance for me in Brooklyn? I have a business there. And I know a lot if the business owners on our street."
I had a long excited conversation with her.
The man was a white man who was so interested in Chinese culture that he took every class at the bamboo hut.
Eventually the woman dropped out saying she was too sore after the first class and was concerned that lion dance might make her look too bulky, but that she would help set up an lion dance for us on Brooklyn.
" We will need to gather a team of at least 10" Joyce said. "Doing this rag tag stuff in NJ was one thing. But I don't want to embarrass ourselves in front of people that actually know what lion dance is. Then we could never eat dim sum or go shopping there again.
We began to teach and train our team of one. He was tall and had a lot of potential but picking up the moves was difficult for him. Because of his height, people often thought he was the leader of our group, which I found funny but Joyce did not. But teaching Jack... we began to call him Jack of all trades because he studied all of the classes at Bamboo Hut...meant that Joyce and Jack could be in the Black Lion, I could drum... and my children could play gong and cymbals. In other words... we had a team. An adult team with am adult head.
Kong Ming set up a bunch of lion dances dor us and this Chinese New Year we had a schedule. It was a schedule so packed that we wouldn't even be able to travel back to Boston. Kong Ming had connections to all these companies and Schools on the Bamboo Bridge. A section of the bridge we had never even walked before. Granted, they didnt really know about lion dance or what to feed the lion but at least we were an actual team.
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