2015 Lion Dance (Boston Lunar New Year) Gund Kwok

Chinese New Year 2015 -- Boston Chinatown [II of IV]

Noah's first lost tooth.

Despite a slight cough yesterday, probably from a weakened immune system due to Lion Dancing in the snow, followed by over stimulation and a lot of chow mein and fried rice I sent Noah off to school, protesting or not. Then he lost his tooth. Unfortunately he literally lost it after taking it from his mouth. Shoot! If I had kept him home we would have that tooth. Did he eat it? Did he just throw it away because he had others? Mommy was pretty upset because she definitely wanted it as a souvenir.
It turned out Noah's teacher, Ms. Shea, was also sick that day, and so the normal protocol might not have been the same.

But then today, somehow, miraculously, Miss Shea found the tooth! In fact it was put in a plastic bag and placed in Noah's folder. Upon arriving home (again after much protest because despite having stayed out longer than any of the other children they hadn't had enough) I tooth the sacred relic, which was placed in a clear plastic bag and taped to the folder (not just with any old scotch tape find you, but strong packing tape) well I took this treasure of treasures away from Jonah who wanted to play with it, and taped it to the door.

"Nobody touches this until Mommy gets home." I said. I do not put my foot down with many things. But here I did.

Noah's Lion Dance Chinatown adventure

This year was easier for me. Our team isn't necessarily bigger in terms of number of people. It's more like the young kids are now teens and are not only willing but eager to do Lion Head, drum, and pretty much anything. Some kids who came earlier got tired real fast so i was glad I didn't bring Noah in the morning. Those kids went back to the school with the baby head about half way through and then as we were almost finished I began to get worried about finishing before Noah came out and had a turn at lion dancing. With creeping horror I imagined his wrath. Well, Grace and Noah drove out as it began to snow and I ran back to the school to get the lion head and to get Noah and Jonah and Grace. The only problem now was I had misplaced my team. For some reason I saw everyone else besides our team. I even started asking friends I knew in the other teams, which would usually be a no-no but hey, the rules change when you have to deal with tantrums.
Noah was pretty mad when he heard the parade was almost over. But almost over is a relative term. We caught up with Jing and the team at the C-Mart near Hei La Moon. Basically we still had an hour left of lion dancing. Passing our school to hit some of the stores by Tai Tung that we had missed in the morning, Jonah was dropped off with Grace at the school. The other teens were basically watching Noah and holding his tail, then I realized I could just go under the little tail and stick Noah on my shoulders for the walking parts. That would save his energy for the actual lion dancing. I don't know why I hadn't thought of that earlier. Of course I think my shoulders became more sore from this section of the day than the entirety of the lion dancing activity that preceded it. But Noah had his Chinatown adventure and we had our Chinese New Year reunion. I really like this little tradition of meeting everyone in the streets of Chinatown, and it has gotten better every year as the teams become closer and closer to each other. It's like a giant family reunion that takes place on the street. It really must be something for a child.
Hopefully next year there won't be snow, so we can actually bring a wagon or something that I could pull Noah and Jonah  in.

The Magic dress

I slowly woke up this morning pondering religion and Kung Fu. I've been tying these things, specifically the Catholic ideas and Lion Dance into my new novel and was day dreaming about starting a lion dance group at St. James, which may or may not happen. Anyway, in my imagination I thought about what would happen if people of different religions decided to join the team, specifically this other Sifu, Uncle Gai. I don't know why he popped into my mind, but he was ostracized unfairly from an organization (and then let back in later) in sort of a microcosmic way that some early members of the Church were excommunicated you know back when the Roman Empire still existed. Why did this pop into my head? I don't know. But I imagined explaining my Faith (which is probably different from the Catholic Church's platform but  there is more variation I think than people let on.) Anyway I running through a martial arts, religious argument in my head.

"Do any of you have any proof that any God or gods or Buddhas or angels exist in the way we pray to them? Real proof. Scientific proof. The answer is no. In fact that  is why faith is important. If it was just proof then it would be science and not religion. So to bring in people to your religion you don't have to prove that you know the TRUTH or that yours is the best religion. You just have to show that your religion is as good as the other, and that since you know us and hang out with us, you might as well be part of our community."

And then I ran through some criticisms I had in my mind of Christianity, even though I now consider myself to be Christian.

"Let's look at it from a martial arts perspective. Here is a White Crane punch. The basic one where we train to turn our waist and not our stance. Here's a Choi lei fut punch where you turn the stance. Here is a Hung Gar stance where the waist and the stance do not move and the arm is not fully extended. Here is a Wing Chun stance where the hips turns but the punch is short. If you are a student of any of these systems you might think that your way is the best way. But you don't have to. You could agree that there are other ways that may or may not be better but you are simply practicing your system because that is what you were raised in and that is what you are familiar with. You can have friends of other systems and visit other schools, but ultimately if you are a Wing Chun Sifu, even if you take up another system it doesn't necessarily mean you convert if you are part of a long lineage and tradition. But to say that only your punch works and no other punch is even valid or possible is ridiculous."

Well I woke up out of this horrible day dream because who day dreams about nonsense like this? And I saw Grace holding her phone. She held up a picture of a dress and asked me what color it was.

"Blue and green."

"What!?"

"Well okay I guess the green is a darkish brownish color what would you call it?"

The story of the dress is already widespread. At first I thought it was some sort of trick where a program created a different image to be seen by different people, but Grace and I were looking at the same screen and she said it was blue and black. Not just a little black, but straight black.

There are a ton of explanations, some scientific, some probably not so much. But here is the thing. I was upset at the way Grace said, "No it's..." I wouldn't say it like that. I see it this way, if you see it a different way okay. Maybe it's because of that Buddhist story of the elephant that I always think about. Maybe it's because I'm mixed race. But I have no problem with seeing it one way and immediately acknowledging that there is another way to see it, even if that's not how I see it. The fact that people got angry and in a huff about it is so telling of human nature.

A pile of Hong Baos

Noah woke up early this morning and just went downstairs. After a while I was curious as to what exactly he was doing because he usually calls for me or Grace. I came downstairs to in a pile of red envelopes playing by himself. We have two special stuffed animals, one a rabbit, to represent Jonah, and one ox to represent Noah. They were flying over the treasure of red envelopes. I laughed and Noah laughed when he saw he had been caught playing in his own world.
"I just came down to play!" Noah said excitedly.

Actually as I right this I realize that a pile of Hong Baos, as some sort of treasure is a cool idea. I will have to put that somehow into the book I am writing which is a fantastical representation of Lion Dance, borrowing heavily from non-Chinese myths, but in a Chinese American worldview. I.e. you can tell the fantasy world sprouted from my head as opposed to say J.K. Rowling's or Tolkein's imagination.

Creepy Snowman

Noah has really been enjoying these giant snow banks. He makes me follow him into the yard to "go on a journey." I considered building an igloo with him out of the giant block of ice that we hired someone to hack off of the roof. But we settled for a giant snowman with eyes made out of one piece of a yellow envelope that happened to be nearby. When you look out the bathroom window it looks like he is staring up at you. I thought it would be cute and funny but actually it's kind of creepy. In retrospect, it's probably bad Feng Shui. I should have made the snow man facing outward to protect the house. But I built the guy for fun and I figured we should have some interaction with him from inside the house.