Drums and Dragons

We have seen posters advertising Chinese New Year events at a shopping mall with five different events listed for today. I have tried without luck to search online for times but came up empty handed. I have a livestream practice run at 9:30 for a tour I’m hosting tomorrow with another guide as my guest and then I head off in the hope of catching at least some of them.

Arriving before 11:00 I immediately spot several dancers with telltale “lion” legs and conclude my arrival is timely. Making a bee-line for the information counter I notice the centre stage bedecked in red and gold with around a dozen lion heads lined up neatly in a row waiting for their legs to turn up.

It turns out nothing is going to happen before 12:00 with the main show really not scheduled until 1:00. He neglected to tell me about the half hour of speeches in between those times.

I kill an hour sitting, wandering, taking pics of drummers practicing and props being put together before claiming a position at a table in a cafe on the mezzanine level.

It was a fabulous show with drummers, lion dancers, lion acrobat on stilts, face-changing opera. All in all, five performances and all I had to do was sit on two cups of tea for two hours to hold my table. Actually Richard arrived halfway through the speeches and we ordered a meal to share.

We returned to the Newton Food Centre for dinner because it’s cheap and the food is so good.

All the fun of Lunar New Year: https://www.youtube.com/live/CrXYOi7GsxY?si=jO0…Read more