BBB Chapter 11: protocol

Pai Teep. Before you do a lion dance, you have to Pai Teep. You give out a little card wishing the business ornhousehold happy new Year and let them mnow5that hou will be coming around with a lion dance crew on such and such a date. This gives them time to be ready. They may want to set up something special or at least have some money allocated to put in a red envelope for the lion head...si here is the thing. When you do lion dance like this.. ie you are asking them if they want a lion dance, it feels like cold calling or begging. Technically you aren't asking for any money. You are asking for a Chiang which usually includes money... and if you are asking a business that is not run by Chinese or a household that isn't Chinese... then you might have to explain that... which makes it feel even more like begging.

When we are a baby team with a baby head and a baby drum in Jamaica Plain... we did do lion dance in the neighborhood for fun and cookies or even pretend money was completely acceptable and I made that known. What was really cool and a learning moment was when we got different currencies. My kids got to learn what Indian money looked like. Another neighbor that joined our team made popcirn5bags for everyone with Happy New Year written on the bags in Kanji ( which is the same as Chinese actually) the truth is the money or red envelope in the ritual is not really payment unless you consider a coin you toss into a wishing well to be payment. It is a ritual sacrifice of sorts to bring good luck to the person that is producing it. Oranges lettuce and all that... they all mean something. And of course....it is also kind of like trick or treating..  and it is also partially like payment as well. But on that day... you will get the cheapest lion dance ever because it is by donation where as if you called up our team, (yes even our team) and need us to take off work and drive to a location to perform a lion dance... well it is highly unlikely that we would do that for baked cookies. I mean we might... but it is highly unlikely.

The first year in NJ we didnt seek out any lion dances. We only did the ones that sought us out and after all, we were a little baby team.

The second year we only called some places. We didn't have a little card to pass out because honestly in NJ everything is really spread out. Usually we sought out places that we ate at. So technically we had already spent money at the business. I mean..  where we are there isn't a. Chinatown or a real culture of doing store to store... so instead of continuing a tradition we were building one. And if we wanted to build one we had to support the businesses otherwise they wouldn't be around. 

The second year was pretty fun, withnthe black lion. But we did get a lot of people hanging up on us when we called. We also realized it was not that easy to do a bunch of stores in one day. I mean we wanted to have fun not break our backs with a new team and 6 vehicles driving from place to place... and we wanted to take our time and do a real dance each time. So if you think you do a 10 minute dance and you take 10 minutes to drive to each store... if you do 5 stores... that's two hours. And the truth is... 10 minutes is not what we were doing. 

But regardless the second year with the  lack head was a success and people accepted that Zhang Fei haead. We had fun, we ate dinner after... and we had done it. We had done a lion dance in the traditional format in NJ.

The Third year... I may have lost my own true left hand...  or rather it was in the belly of the black head... but Joyce had bought a brand new custom made pink head. Last year had been about me. But this year would be about her and her team. And so one of our students created a teep to pai..a card with a picture and information. And this year we would indeed go in person to different stores and explain what we were doing. We skipped the ones that had refused last year and picked some new businesses we had seen pop up.