New Year Festivities

Last night, Melissa and I helped ring in the Chinese New Year. Apparently it doesn't start officially until 18 February, but the celebrations generally last for 15 days. I'm guessing that this particular celebration was constrained by the need to have it (a) on a weekend and (b) at a time when the ISU ballroom was available. But it was beautifully done.

The Chinese Club approached Melissa to see if she would be willing to demonstrate some taiji as part of the event. She asked me, and we both agreed that we didn't mind so long as we weren't up there alone. :^) But for that, we got to come in and watch the rest of the festivities for free. It's an event I'd always considered going to, but just never made it in years past. Apparently the way to get me there is to ask me to part of it. *shrugs*

Anyway, I got there just before the first rendition of the Lion Dance. That was cool. The head of the "lion" was so stylized that it wasn't obvious that it was a lion to me, but the neat thing was that its eyes could blink. The mouth opened and closed as well, but it was the eyes that surprised me. I presume it was done by Gung Fu (Kung Fu) that they brought up from Salt Lake, as it is a very...energetic dance. One person operated the head of the lion. The other person was the tail. There was a third person in the saffron yellow of a Buddhist monk (and wearing a large, bald head-mask), sort of taunting and egging the lion on.

The Gung Fu group's own demo involved demonstrations of several of their forms. The best one, by far, was the saber form. Note that a Chinese "saber" looks rather like a scimitar. That's one guy I would not want to fight. The others... *shrugs* One guy did a form that seemed to be mostly about drawing in qi, and I could see that he had a good amount of it (Translate that to: 'I could see he had high level mastery' if it makes you happier, but qi is a very useful way of talking about Chinese martial arts). One guy did a double sword form, but all the way through it I just kept thinking "Relax your shoulders!" Not to mention that there were several places with massive openings where a pointy weapon would have gone right through him. I think they would have been effective if the opponent had the same weapons, but not against a finer weapon.

There were several dances as well, with dancers in traditional costumes. All quite beautiful. One group had a double-sided barrel shaped drum strapped at their waists. The older girls (12-16, maybe) were wonderfully in sync. The younger ones (6-10) were, well, not, and were looking around watching the older girls to get their cues. And this made it all the more enjoyable to watch. :^)

Melissa and I were toward the end of the program. Our demo wasn't nearly as "exciting" as the Gung Fu one, but I got the impression that it made the Chinese people very happy to see it. The thing is that, in China, there are people who do the form every morning in just about every public park, and maybe even on street corners. I think seeing it reminds them of home. I could, of course, be reading stuff in that wasn't there, but that's the impression I got. We were thanked several dozen times, often by the same person more than once.

At any rate, it was a lot of fun.