Lion Dancing in Year of the Rat 2

Well, on to our second week of Chinese New Year Lion Dancing.  Wednesday was one of our longest days........it was for the senior homes in Oakland run by Family Bridges and Hong Lok Senior Center.   Nothing like doing 6 lion dances in a roll through out the day!  Family Bridges is near Oakland Chinatown and the building that it is housed in, used to be a Hotel....so the facilities are very nice.......with seniors who speak Cantonese,Mandarin, and Vietnamese all living there.  This facility I had the pleasure of dedicating almost 20 years ago, when they first opened their doors....every year since then they have invited us back.

Corey, is the lead in Kei Lun Martial Arts, he's was setting up the musicians as we get ready to perform at Family Bridges Senior Homes.  the stand with the gong and big splash gong is what I played.

Here's Keith dancing his Zhang Fei Lion.....there was lot's of red envelops to pick up, the seniors were quite pleased with the performance and fed the lion well!!

After Family Bridges it was off to Hong Lok Senior Center.  It was not too faraway.  The Center, however is always a tough audience to perform, they have many members from Guangdong who know about Lion Dancing.  Every year they challenge us with a puzzle, you must solve it in order to get the red envelop.  This is very old school...nowadays most Lion Dancers bring their own jong........and do a prearranged routine.  It was not this way in the past, usually the village elders or association leaders would leave you a puzzle to solve, if you could not do it you were asked to leave...they only wanted teams with the highest skill and knowledge of lion dancing tradition.  Well at Hong Lok they every year found a higher and higher place to put the red envelop...to make it extra difficult.   So this year Ben who was the Buddha this time, brought benches so the lion could stack them up to get to the chiang (literally the greens..money!)

Our benches came in handy to help Keith to reach the chiang.  On the bottom is Austin and Alec dancing the junior golden lion...they were a hit with the seniors....everyone had a red envelop for them!!

Later on the Hong Lok Center had lunch for us.......and we would go back in the afternoon to Family Bridges and the Diabetes Center to finish off the days activities.  It was very satisfying day as we had an opportunity to give back to our community.......and help seniors in our community enjoy the Chinese New Year Celebration!