New Year Season

We're training under the lions now, as Chinese New Year approaches. February 18 is the official start of the lunar new year, but the celebrations go on all month. So we are preparing for the Boston Chinatown celebration on February 25 (a really fun day for the family, if you're looking for something unusual to do), and a Travel Day maybe a weekend or two after, when we caravan out to businesses in the Greater Boston area to do lion dancing for them.

The street dancing that we do is usually rougher and faster than traditional dances done for weddings or for competitions. There are a little under 200 businesses in Boston Chinatown, less than 10 kung fu schools that do lion dancing (maybe as few as 5), and just one day to visit them all. So we only have time to do a short dance, usually the 3-star pattern, and eat the greens and bow and then quickly move to the next store and so on.



As you can see, there are a whole lot of people involved for a simple street dance. A drummer, cymbal players, guides for the lion dancers (who cannot see very well), crowd control, and a team leader (our sifu in this case) who moves teams from store to store and schedules breaks etc. Unseen is the advance scout who goes well ahead of the team to confirm with stores who reserved dances in advance or to check with unscheduled stores to see if they need a lion dance, negotiates prices, even brings and sets up the "green" if needed.

A lot of advance planning takes place for Boston Chinatown's new year event. To keep conflict from breaking out, the area kung fu schools agree upon routes for their teams so that schools don't cross paths too often and end up competing for the same stores.

Everyone on the lion dance team has to gear up properly for the event. We spend 8-12 hours outside in New England winter weather. Last year it was mercifully warm, a nice 40 degrees. But the year before it was 15, wind chill around zero, so we have to guard against frostbite & hypothermia in those conditions. The lion dancers are at risk of strained muscles -- they spell each other off so no one gets exhausted, which means one team is sweating under the lions while the other team shivers in the cold. There's also firecrackers going off underfoot, vehicle traffic on some streets, etc.

One of our sister schools brings a pickup truck every year. Their drum is loaded into the back and there is enough room to pile in coolers and thermoses and extra gear. Someone also hooks up a propane-fueled heat lamp to the tailgate. That's the most popular spot in the entourage, save for being the lion head.

A short gear list for CNY lion dancing:

Earplugs
Dust mask
Goggles/sunglasses secured with head strap
Wooly hat
Thin leather gloves (e.g. batting gloves)
Mittens or ski gloves
Long johns
Hoodie sweatshirt
Red team jacket (a size larger to accommodate layers)
Snow boots or sturdy waterproof shoes
Energy bars or gorp
Hot Hands handwarmers


The earplugs are essential because firecrackers, drums and cymbals will be clanging right next to your ears all day. The dust mask filters out smoke and residue. The sunglasses protect against exploding firecrackers (and the sun too). The hoodie is pulled up over the wooly hat to keep you warm and prevent hot firecracker pieces from falling down the back of your shirt. The boots keep your feet from freezing and from being blown up. The thin gloves keep your hands from being shredded on the bamboo and wire inside the lion head.

The energy bars are because you probably won't eat all day, and the expense of energy even if you're not dancing makes you vulnerable to cold injury. The handwarmers should be slipped inside your boots and zipped into your ski gloves.

So, right now we are training with a mind towards a couple of very long days. At the end of February we'll all be exhausted.