The clanging of cymbals and pounding of drums reverberated throughout the still air of a nation celebrating Chinese New Year.
“Lion Dance!!!” my kindergartener exclaimed.
“Do you want to check it out?” I suggested.
His excitement was palpable. We held hands and dashed out of the house, never mind that he wore his scandals wrongly. There was no time to waste.
We strode towards the direction of the sound. It seemed to have come from the opposite block of flats.
I made a professional judgement.
The lion dance troupe should be on the 6th floor.
Except that I was wrong.
3rd floor!
Wrong again.
4th floor?
Mocked by the empty corridor.
Eventually, I got fed up and dragged my boy to the topmost floor.
The view was magnificent, but our target was conspicuously absent.
Down one floor.
Success! Well, not quite, because the lion dance performance had ended. But the gentleman who was acting as the lion was still around.
“Would you like to touch it?” he offered my kindergartener.
My son hid behind me at first, petrified of the giant-looking lion. He did pluck up his courage to touch its yellow mane.
We later took the lift with the lion. My boy must be overjoyed.
Because when he came home, that was all he could talk about. He asked me how to draw a lion dance and proceeded to draw lions spanning the whole spectrum of the rainbow. Never mind that his lions looked more like aliens.
He even attempted to write 舞狮. Actually I hadn’t meant to teach him that, but he wrote it erroneously as 五十, so I felt that it was my duty to teach him.
I’m glad that my bicultural kid Is enamoured of lion dance performances. This ensures that his self-identity wouldn’t be swarmed with all things Japanese.