Lion Dancing

595 Words2 Pages

Lion Dancing

When you’re in Chinatown on Chinese New Year, you can hear the firecrackers popping followed by the loud music of banging drums and cymbals clashing in beat with each other. Then as the smoke clears, a huge beast emerges from the smoke. Kids hide behind their parents as the beast shakes its head from side to side and begins to dance around. It is a frightening beast, but it scares the evil spirits and brings good luck to all the stores around Chinatown. As some people know from this description, this is Lion Dancing – a mixture of dance and martial arts. The legendary story of how Lion Dancing began takes place in a cave where the lions were sleeping. A monk enters and prepares a shrine around the cave. When he is finished, the monk wakes the sleepy lions by playing on the drum and gong. He wants the sleepy lions to bow to the shrine he has created, but the lions only want to dance around and have fun. So the monk takes some lettuce greens to poke fun at the lions and get their attention. This makes the lions so mad that they eat the greens. Nowadays, Lion Dancers throw lettuce at the audience in order to spread good luck around because the greens represent wealth.

There are different styles to Lion Dancing and they are each represented in various ways. For example, the Buddhists believe this dance spreads courage, energy, and wisdom to people. This is because Lion Dancers use fighting tiger and crane poses to make themselves look powerful. In other lion dance troupes, their stances can represent specific animals just from the movements of their feet. The head of the lion also represents different animal forms by the symbols and decorations on it. For instance, the curved horn on top of the head represents a phoenix and the ears and tail represent a unicorn. Some may assumed lion dancing is only done on Chinese New Year and Harvest Moon, but this kind of dance is also used to bless people on special days such as birthdays, weddings, and grand openings for stores.

Lion Dancing has inspired me to get in touch with my Asian American side. At first, all I knew about Lion Dancing was that it’s entertaining and brings good luck to everyone during Chinese New Year.

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