- Red and Yellow Lions.
Lion Dance is a must for the parade in Kuching organized by Chinese temple, but not for Wesak day although both are participated by Chinese. On that day, we saw a lot of lion dance teams. There were at least a lion dance or two in between every few decorated lorries.
- The blue lions are performing dangerous stunts. The lorry was moving and I can’t move my camera at the same speed of the lorry and caused the blured photo. Can you find that there are two pairs of lions on the lorry?
Lions usually come in pair. They can even tell you which one is the male or the female. I can’t differentiate them, can you?
-It’s really dangerous, and they moved according to the rhythm of the drum and Chinese cymbals.
According to wikipedia, Chinese Lion Dance can be generally categorised into Northern Lion and Southern Lion.
-Another lion dance on lorry. I wonder why they covered the lorry using aluminiun foil.
- The lion seem like chasing the car. From the lion’s colour, I can recognize that this is a Cantonese lion. Am I right?
- This team was taking a break and they were in lion costume.
- Doesn’t it look scary? There was wooden-knocking-sound when they open their mouth and close it, like the sound of its teeth biting something. My friend told me that this lion is the king of all the other lions in the lion dances tradition. All other lions have to respect and give way to this type of lion.
Each team came and passed. Sometimes there was a long wait before the next team of decorated vehicles came. I was guessing what were the reasons behind. From previous parade which I had observed years ago, here comes a few guesses.
1. It was because some lorries might have problems on the route where its decoration was too tall and there were overhead cables across the street which were too low, they were clever enough to prepare a long stick to lift up the cable along the street. Well, it can get through finally, but it took time, causing delay and create a distance between the teams in front.
2. Sometimes their vehicles were too long or too wide which made them difficult to pass through a street or a corner, and even worse, some drivers park their cars beside the road that blocked the “big” decorated vehicles.
3. When they reach the traffic lights, the parade have to give ways to other vehicles from other junctions. This happened usually on walking teams, because I had experienced it during the Wesak day parade for the last 2 years.
4. Slow human walkers.
5. …
You have to watch at the location where the problems were happenning only then you might know the reasons. This time I only get the effect (long wait) but did not noticed any reasons of why it has happenned.
… after we waited and waited and waited… here comes another team.
-A red and long dragon dance.
Another highlight of the night, dragon dance is a very interesting performance especially when they spin up the dragon, which is called the “Corkscrew” trick.
-A green long dragon.
How can all of them work together in such a good coordination which not causing any crash in the dragon body parts? I am curious.
There is always a person in front of the dragon carrying a ball, which I had forgotten to include them in the photos. As I told you before, the more I look through the camera, the less I watch the real parade actually. I felt that I miss a lot of thing because I spent most of the time taking photos, but not watch it using my own eyes.
-Green dragon was walking up the hill.
My camera lense keep on following the green dragon. The photo above is not really a good photo (because it is blur) but I like the tail of the dragon.
-A team of people was carrying a Chinese God on a “Saden Chair” or “Jiao4Zi3” in Chinese which means a wheelless vehicle, human-powered transport. They run very fast, stop and run faster. A person in front hit the drum to give the signal while they were running. Some people even shout when they were running.
Look carefully on the picture above, the God’s seat is clearer but the rest is blur. I purposely move the camera in the same direction of their movement.
And finally…
…
…
…
here comes the main character of the night. It’s Tua Pek Kong’s birthday. It’s the last team of the parade.
- There are many people following the Tua Pek Kong.
I really hope that I can remember every bits of the detail of the parade, but sometimes I even missed the important shots while I was changing the setting on my new camera. Some of my mind power had shift to the camera instead of watching the parade. Hehe… If I forget something I can ask SiewPeng. :p
The stories have not ended yet, part 3 is coming !!!
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