Chinese New Year in Australia

We met up with our friends who had been in Wuxi with us in Perth to celebrate Chinese New Year at the Jade Dynasty Chinese Restaurant in Perth's "China Town".

Walking around Northbridge and looking at the shops with Chinese writing and seeing signs of fireworks having been let off in the streets was a confusing feeling as we were just getting used to being out of China for a while. It was a big restaurant with about 300 patrons, many of them children, most of them Chinese. We were part of a group of 11 and our table was right up near the red-curtained stage, so we knew we were in for a treat.

A few minutes into the meal, after the first one or two courses had been placed on the lazy susan in the middle of our large table, a group of musicians took there place on the small stage with drums and cymbals. The drumming started and everyone waited eagerly. Soon we caught sight of a number of brightly costumed lion dancers coming in through the door of the restaurant.

There would have been about eight of them, maybe more, all different colours. Inside each costume were two young dancers, one for the head and one for the hindquarters. The head was proportionately large for the body, with huge eyes and long-lashed eyelids that opened and closed. The front dancer held the lion's head high above his own head and worked the eyes and the large flapping mouth.

The restaurant patrons, especially the children, had little red envelopes that they were putting money into. As the lions danced around the children would put the red envelopes into the lion's mouths. But the game was for parents to lift the children high on their shoulders so they could hold the envelope as high as possible and tease the lion to come up and get it. The head dancer would then have to climb onto the hind dancer's shoulders or head to reach. The dance progressed and as the children were lifted higher and higher the dancers became more and more acrobatic. One young lady (in her 20s maybe) at a table near us climbed high on a table and teased one of the lions mercilessly. With one gulp she was 'swallowed' as the head dancer suddenly popped the head of the costume right over her and took her inside.

Once or twice we were able to glance under the dancers' costumes and noticed the young people working and sweating there - bearing in mind that it was a hot summer's night in Perth. Some of the young people were of Chinese origins, others were not. At one stage we were beginning to feel concerned as some of them looked so distressed with the heat. And then we noticed one of the lions had collapsed on the floor. But as we turned around we soon realised all of the lions were sinking to the floor, and the parents were lifting the children onto their backs.

And all the time the drums and cymbals played on with only slight changes in rythm to indicate a new phase in the dance. Finally the rhythm changed and the weary dancers worked their way back through the restaurant and out the door.