I’ve finally started painting one of the lion heads. It has took me a fair bit of time trying to pencil in the template to make sure it’s as true as I can be with the original. It’s been slow progress as I haven’t painted in quite some time so I’ve been trying to make sure my brush strokes are clean. In saying that I like to think that a lion like any living animal has its blemishes and nothing is perfect so if I haven’t got a stroke right and it isn’t 100% off, I’m happy to leave it as it adds some character to the lion. Here are some photos of the progress

And last but not least, I enjoyed the performances that the Chan Family Choy Lee Fut school had around the streets of Chinatown. I particularly enjoy the continuous parading of the lions and the drums from shop to shop around Chinatown as opposed to the start and stop nature that I see in Cabramatta. Their drumming style is also similar to the drumming style that we perform with in Dragon Style Kung Fu (based on the Hong Kong Hung Gar style of drumming) so it was nice to be able to follow and know why and what movements they’re performing. They also has some killer firecrackers that were double layered and went off with a bang! The noise was deafening, the smoke choking, and the flames bright. At one point, the smoke managed to fill a nearby shop and set off its fire alarms causing the local firies to make a visit. It’s always funny when people are standing quite close watching the performance and are reluctant to move back to a safe distance as the firecrackers are going to be lit. Fortunately, they had a forced safe distance or 5metres before anything was lit and then a space of about 10metres as everyone ran for cover when they realised that the sound of the firecrackers exploding is louder than they expected.

The team did an amazing job especially as towards the end of their performances, it started to bucket down with rain making the floor slippery and doing shoulder stands dangerous. They had a close call with one of the heads slipping backwards during an attempted shoulder stack but fortunately, no one was injured.

They did a great job keeping everyone entertained.

I usually make my way to the Ming Yue Lay Buddhist temple in Bonnirigg every year for New Years Eve to catch the Teo Chew Association performing there. They usually do a couple of cool set routines and showcase a lot of their lions. I missed out on seeing them there this year but caught some of their performances on the streets of Cabramatta.

They were rocking some new uniforms.