Awaken the Golden Lion in me

Lion dance. What is it about Lion Dance that really attracts me when I was young ambitious boy.

I remember when I was 10 years old, I always look forward for Chinese New year to come. Besides, the red pockets or "Ampau" that we receive from our aunties and relatives, another thing that always brings me back fond memories was the LION or "tak tung cheng" we, kids called it. Whenever, we visited our chinese relatives day or two before Chinese New Year, we always try to find if they have a small Lion head around. If they have one, we always play pretend that we are performing the actual thing. We normally performed out of adult eyes in case they criticise or laugh at us.

I remember I was the drummer and my cousins was the lion performers. We acted like the adults do, banging the drums and mimicking the moves i.e. moving the lion head side to side or pretending we are running away from the firecrackers or eating mandarin oranges just like that actual performers do on the actual day. We always takes turn with the drums and lion head. We could do this like from 9am to 5 pm non stop just enjoying and laughing and having a great time.

As Chinese New celebration, rolled by, I always find myself having good hearing even amongst all the firecrackers to notice even the faint drumming sound of the Lion dance. As soon, as I hear one, I normally cycle to my friend's house and soon after we will be cycled to the beat of the drums. Reaching at our destination, we used our bicycles seat as our sitting stool as we sat and watched the performance. Not long after, the performance ended and we felt sad. We wanted more. Sometimes, if we are lucky we are given red ampau just being there watching the performance. We repeat this scene over and over again in just one day. As soon, one of us spot a convoy of lion dance performers, we normally tail the convoy as fast as our little legs can carry us to the performer's location. Although it was tiring but at the end of the day, we were so delighted and chirpy talking about how many unblown firecrackers did we collect or how much money did we get from visiting each houses. Mind you, this was just only on the first day of Chinese new year and normally the celebrations lasted for three days.

So now after 14 years later from that day, I am now the performer and learning the intricates of the lion dance. As, I was walking along our stall on Fiesta Malaysia, 27 September 2009, I noticed a young boy, no more than 7 years old gazing and pointing the lion dance photos and looking at his parents lovingly but with excitement in his eyes. Fond memories of my childhood flooded back as I squat with him and explain each photos to him tenderly my love of the dance that brought me closer to my Chinese Culture that had lay been sleeping for 14 years.

I hope in time to come, I will endeavour to work hard on my performance so that one day I will inspire future generations to pick up this long living traditions of the LION DANCE.