Sunday 18 January 2009

Lion Dancing

We are approaching Chinese New Year (26 January) very fast, and since Brunei is full of Chinese people, it's celebrated widely here, as it's the longest and most important celebration for the Chinese people.
The kids will dress up for school, and learn about special Chinese traditions in the coming weeks; they have time off for the Chinese New Year itself and will also have a Chinese party before their break.

Today we went to the Kids Hash, and it was the Chinese New Year themed one. After the run and the usual hot dog, we were treated to a fantastic Lion Dance performance.



I have never seen any of these 'live', so I didn't really know what to expect. But I thought it was absolutely amazing! At first the kids were a bit wary, but both of them came around. Linnea only stayed close to give the lion her little red envelope, but Lucas got more and more brave, and was really curious about these lions.



"What's under there?"



They had a little kid who was in control of the drums, he was so good. It was almost a bit hypnotizing to stand there and listen to the beat.



The lions danced and jumped around, Lucas got swiped at one stage when one of them came a bit close:





Most of the kids thought it was super exciting too, but I can understand the ones being a bit afraid, cause the lions were big and looked rather intimidating, and really had lots of energy and moved about a lot.
All the kids got little red envelopes handed to them beforehand, and we were supposed to put a dollar in them, for the kids to "feed" them to the lions - to bring good luck.



One of the lions also "ate" some oranges, actually quite a lot of oranges, several piles of them, and in the end he used each segment of those oranges to make out a number - the lucky number of today.
That lion also danced around all the cars, again to bless them and bring good luck, and we all got oranges to eat for luck.









I will write more about the Chinese New Year in future posts. I am really happy to have seen this Lion Dance though - it was really spectacular and really, really cool! We had a great afternoon today at the hash!

1 comment:

malin2 said...

Visst är det help supercoolt!