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In actual fact I have put all the pieces together to complete the rainbow lion and he was awoken on the 17th of February. Before I show you some of the pictures of the ceremony and the lion in action, here … Continue reading
Happy Chinese New Year of the Snake to everyone! I hope everyone had a joyous fun-filled Chinese New Year filled with lots of family, good food, laughter, and red packets!
For those of you who were involved with performances to celebrate the occasion, I hope all your hard work with training and preparations paid off and everyone had a good time with no mishaps. For those of you who watched all the great performances, I hope you take away lasting memories and remember that many of these people put in blood, sweat and tears into getting everything right for the show.
Being in Sydney, there have been plenty of celebrations everywhere! Of course, my home town of Cabramatta has been buzzing with activity since Chinese New Year Eve. The smell and smoke of incense has burned my eyes as families pay their respects to the deities and wish for a healthy and prosperous new year. There were plenty of lions and firecrackers to be heard across the larger Chinese and Vietnamese temples and fireworks to keep the noise going.
View from the front gates of “Bonnirigg Temple” Ming Yuet Kuei Si Lum (Australian Chinese Buddhist Society)
View inside the main hall at Canley Vale Kwan Yin Temple
Fireworks above the temples
This is a link to a clip I put up on youtube featuring some local lion dancers at the above temple.
Then there has literally been non-stop lion dancing and firecrackers around the streets of Cabramatta as teams of lions scare away evil spirits and bless the shops with good fortune. Our team, the Dragon Style Kung Fu and Fitness Association had an awesome two days of lion dancing on the 16th and 17th of February. For a team that consisted of only five people who had previous lion dancing experience and the remaining 15 people with no experience whatsoever I think we did an incredible job.
There was a plethora of other teams on show those few days including Yun Yee Tong, Sydney Indochinese Youth Sports Association, Wu Chu Association, and Dong Tam. I hope those guys had a great time. It was inevitable that teams would bump into each other while dancing and we had a “Wui Si” (meeting of lions) with Sydney Yun Yee Tong on one of those days. A great spectacle to watch by all those who attended.
Here are some photos of the day:
Look what we found! Walking past Yun Yee Tong’s truck!
Meeting of the two teams. I’m sure there are some better photos/video footage so I’ll try to dig some out and post it up.
Actually the celebrations started one week earlier at Fairfield Showground where the annual Cho Tet celebrations are held by the Vietnamese Australian Community to welcome in the Lunar New Year. Unfortunately, the rain didn’t do any favours but the appearance of Prime Minister Julia Gillard alongside the Leader of Opposition Tony Abbot showed how important the festival was. Again lots of lions, firecrackers, singing, and heaps and heaps of food!
The celebrations continued across Sydney with celebrations in Chinatown, Cabramatta, Canley Vale, Canley Heights, Bankstown, Campsie, Hurstville, Chatswood, (soon to be Eastwood coming weekend). There was the annual City of Sydney Twilight Parade featuring thousands of performers and including a massive dragon, a massive lion, and an awesome massive helium balloon dragon!!!!!!
The celebrations aren’t over yet! There are still performances to come in Eastwood this coming weekend the 23/2/2013 as well as lion dancing in Chinatown and Dragon Boat racing.
I’m so excited. I feel like a kid on Christmas eager to open up my present!
Finally, my parcel has arrived!!! Just in time for our CNY performances this coming weekend.
I have pushed and pushed for it to be sent and finally had it speedily expressed post.
I ordered a few parts, mainly, a set of pom poms, a set of bristle fur and a beard and a pair of eyes. They were the only thing that was missing to make this lion complete.
I’ll be busily putting it all together now for the big day.
Pictures of the completed lion come through shortly ……
Here are the parts
Doom Doom Chang! go the drums
Crack crack crack crack crack! go the firecrackers
I have fond childhood memories of rushing down to streets of Cabramatta to catch a glimpse of the lions dance around shaking and dancing and thrusting themselves about.
Nothing has changed then and now. I still find myself rushing out to the streets of Cabramatta trying to catch a glimpse of the lions and the explosion of firecrackers.
The only difference now is, in under a week, I’ll be able to participate in that head shaking myself and I’ll be the one who will dance with the popping of firecrackers.
Exciting times.
Hope everyone is enjoying the 2013 Chinese New Year festivities as much as I have so far.
And for the performers, I hope that all your performances run smoothly and there are no accidents. You’ve all trained hard, now play hard (with the crowd of course 😉 )
Below is a picture of one of the other teams in action
Happy New Year
新年快樂
Chuc Mung Nam Moi
Ps. come catch us perform this coming Saturday and Sunday the 16 and 17 of February. We’ll be dancing around the streets of Cabramatta. Dragon Style Kung Fu and Fitness. We’ll be wearing black shirts with our logo on the back.
And if you don’t want to see us, there’ll be plenty of other teams around and a stage with performers in Freedom Plaza
Who’s excited about Chinese New Year 2013?! cos I am.
We’re having full preparation for the new years celebrations- at least 2 days worth of shop to shop street performances in our area, a private eye dotting ceremony for two of the team’s new lions as well as well as a public eye dotting ceremony to WAKE UP LION!!!
I think it’s a pretty decent effort given that barr two people on the team, the remaining 15 or so have never lion danced before let alone been involved with it in any way.
It’s all happening now. To make sure we’ve got one of the better looking lions around, I’m back to getting this lion into performance condition and have ordered the remaining parts I need from Hong Kong.
I’ve racked my brains and searched everywhere for resources but I’ve decided that buying bristle fur is probably easier than buying nylon fishing line and making the fur myself, nor is fashioning the eyes from wooden closet door knobs.
So I’ve ordered in a pair of eyes, a set of black bristle fur, a set of red and black pom poms (the ones I made just don’t cut it) as well as a black and white tail to go with the zheng fei lion that I last restored.
Hopefully all the parts come in before Chinese New Year or at least before the 16/2/2103 so this lion is ready to be woken up.
To get the ball rolling, with getting the lion into shape I enlisted the help of my mum to write the calligraphy on the back .
Merry Christmas everyone!!
hope everyone’s enjoying the festive spirit and staying safe.
And we all know what Christmas leads to…… Chinese New Year!!!
Stay safe!
Vincent
It’s been a long while since my last post.
I’ve moved houses and gone bush for a work stint hence the delay.
I’ve come home for the weekend and managed to work on the eyelids and stick on the rabbit fur. The thickness of the rabbit fur is different in the various areas of the lion. I wanted it to be as sparse as possible to give the lion’s furry bit an uneven almost unclean look. At the back of my mind as I was gluing it on was a scene early on in Jet Li’s Once Upon a Time in China part 3 when Wong Fei Hung’s father grabs a hold of one of his student’s brushes and gives him a tip on how to paint the lion heads face. His main message was along the lines of the strokes shouldn’t be too clean because no face is ever perfect or even.
It’s done!!! I wish I could say I painted it all on my own but alas, it’s was all Zoe’s brilliance and hard work which has gotten us to this point!!!! What a relief to finally get the painting done and I must admit, I’m a very happy man.
To start off with, here is a picture of my lounge room which I doubled as my workshop. One corner ceiling was converted to display my completed items. Just a little bit of motivation to keep me going every time I sat down to watch TV….. ……..I would plonk myself on the couch and call out “Zoe, you haven’t finished painting the lion” before proceeding to relax and watch TV while supervising Zoe =D 
Here is Zoe hard at work putting on the final touches
You can just make out the bottom of my little TV above her head. I took this picture, sitting on the couch. BEST
Thanks to the guys on liondancing.org/forum for advising me on the use of varnish. I ended up with a Josonja’s Polyurethane water based gloss varnish and applied 3 coats to give the lion a heck of a glossy look.
And without further adieu, here are some of the photos
This is what the eyes ended up looking like. A combination of the previous two eyes we had earlier.
And …………………………. here he is!!!
BEHOLD!!!
And the lovely Zoe with our painted lion head.
Picasso in the making.
Hope you like the look of it so far
Progress pictures.
Top view of the lion showing a bit more of the detailing. Still not completed yet though but we’re making good progress. This bit is probably my favourite part of the lion. I love the colours and the lines.
Back and top view with ears included.
Close up of back. We’ve added some little flame things
Some minor detailing on the green bit above the top lip
The base colour is finally painted on cleanly and neatly… minus the eyes .
We’ve also started on the finer detailing.
Check out the blending. Zoe got it down to a master stroke
She’s still working on the eyes!!
We also found a tub of silver paint in the mix of sample pots we had and painted where the mirror will be 
Stay tuned. I’m almost at the finish line.
wakeuplion 