Our final stop was the Palace, our go to restaurant fornanlong time and it had been our final stop last year as well. They had expanded this year too. We were late... which ended up having good and bad aspects to it. The bad aspect was people had been expecting us at a certain time and a lot of people had to leave and didnt get a chance to see us. As we arrived some people that were leaving whinindedd did look like they were related to the people we saw working there regularly told us that a lot of people had been waiting for us. We got our stuff together and started drumming to warm up and also to stall while all of our member arrived. Now here is the thing, last time we had come earlier and this was before the restaurant had expanded .. so it was filled to the brim. This was good in a way. But then owners and the staff had to deal with the crowd and us. This time the only tables left in the restaurant were Jee Geiger yun. Their own people. I think the group that had just left was also relatives. But then main point of this was the traffic had slowed, they could relax... and the lion dance ended up being totally different than last year. We bowed to several altars, the kitchen, the life sized statue of Guan Yu at the door. The staff was eating at the same time as we were so we got to have a more relaxed and conversational feel. And as we did the last Choi c Chiang outside... the owner paused at the pink head saying, "let's see.... it's been over 20 years...." and got in! I quick started playing the drum again. It turns out, all of them had done lion dance in their youth and were from Hok San Village.... the Hok San, as in Hok San style heads... often referred to as competition style heads. The beaked faced lion heads popular in their use on the poles.
The other staff people eating were from Taishan... and we put the pink head on display for people to take pictures with, which people lined up to do.
"Where is the black head from last year?" The manager asked. I explained that we got new heads for a new year and left that one home.
"Do you know what the black head is for? In my village our black head was very powerful. Whenever we went near another teams the other heads had to go down otherwise the black head would go over and hit them. The black head represents Zhang Fei." He told more stories of his youth and lion dance and how he saw the heads being made by his neighbors to be shipped out across the world.
The funny thing was I had no idea he knew how to lion dance and had we come on time there really wouldn't have been time to talk or to now to Guan Yi gau again...which, having done this for the third place that day...made me want to reconnect with my own personal relationship with the saint. Although I have three altars in the house to him, theybfeel like they are less connected than the o e which held the central place at the Kung Fu school where I had learned these skills.
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