Every Lunar New Year, dragon and lion dances around Australia are busy. But this year will be a different story.
Due to the recent recurrent outbreak in parts of Australia, many Lunar New Year celebrations have either been cancelled or have had to be scaled down.
"We have not received an order for the Dragon Dance team so far," Franklin Chan, captain of the Melbourne YMCA Dragon Dance Team, one of Victoria's largest lion awakening groups, said in an interview.
Not only has Zhan Zhihao's dragon dance team been seriously affected, in fact, a number of awakening lion groups contacted in recent days have said that the number of orders received this year has decreased by about 60% to 70% compared with previous years.
Even Melbourne's Chinatown, which has insisted on holding dragon and lion dance parades during the Spring Festival for nearly a century, has had to break with tradition this year, and the "Millennium Dragon" with important cultural symbolism will be absent from the Lunar New Year celebrations for the first time.
In Sydney, local city councils have decided to scale back the Lunar New Year celebrations.
Parramatta City Council has cancelled most of the Lunar New Year celebrations, leaving only the Lantern Parade.
Willoughby City Council plans to host the Cultural Celebration Concert at The Concourse Theatre on Feb. 20, followed by the inaugural Lunar New Year Comedy Festival on Feb. 27.
The City of Sydney, which has hosted "the largest Spring Festival celebration outside Of Asia", has also chosen to keep only 80 separate small-scale events this year, including social distancing restrictions on the New Year market, lighting lanterns and some smaller events held in local restaurants.
<h1>The number of orders is countless</h1>
Cecilia Hsieh, who was attracted to the lion and dragon dances in the early 1980s, said the COVID-19 pandemic was a "double whammy" for the Hongdeok troupe she founded.
Ms. Xue recalled, during the Lunar New Year last year, when they were about to arrive at the lion dance, they received a call from the owner of the restaurant who invited them, telling her that she did not use it because there was not a single customer in the store.
On the first day of the Lunar New Year of the Rat, Australia confirmed its first case of new crown, many Chinese communities, businesses and enterprises were forced to cancel the activities, and the catering industry came to a standstill.
Xue Baolin lamented that at present, the situation in 2021 is not satisfactory. No income means they can't update the props and costumes of the Dragon and Lion Dance, and they have to make careful calculations to ensure that the venue rent can be paid on time.
In addition to the Hongde Troupe, due to the uncertain prospects and the inability to pay more than 40,000 Australian dollars a year for the rental of training venues, the Zhoujiaquan Martial Arts Association also had to move its weekly training to the Tianhou Temple, which can be used free of charge, and the size of the team had to be greatly reduced.
For these community lion groups that rely on volunteers, the sharp reduction in the number of performances will undoubtedly bring a heavy financial blow. But the challenges they face are much more than that.
In the Victorian township city of Bendigo, the centuries-old Jinshan Ruishi Regiment is also facing no small challenge.
In previous years, they ran a dozen performances a day around the Lunar New Year, but this year, they only received a handful of orders.
"We also lost a lot of members," said Clinton Miller, coach of the Lions Adult Lions.
The change of players in previous years is normal, but in the current situation of uncertainty, they are unable to recruit new members normally.
"The concept of [lion dance] is still very foreign to a lot of people [in Bendigo]. Therefore, only by expanding the size of the team can we make everyone feel safe. ”
In the former gold-rush town of Bendigo, the annual Easter street parade is a great opportunity for the Lion Awakening Group to show off its recruitment of new members.
But last year, the town's 150th Bendigo Easter Festival was forced to cancel because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
To this day, this century-old regiment has not yet begun to recruit new members, and the personnel are not picked up.
<h1>From "lion's head and lion's tail" partner to life partner</h1>
Although the literal "lion dance" seems to be closer to "dance", in fact, the dragon dance and lion dance belong to the martial arts kung fu, "one minute on stage, ten years off stage".
Even on days when there is no performance, the lions need to undergo regular training every week to maintain their fitness and skills. Therefore, the suspension of more than ten months caused by the epidemic has a great impact on the team members.
Frank Lam, coach and promoter of the Zhou Jia Quan Martial Arts Association, laughs and says that some lion-headed players have developed "epidemic fat", which will increase the difficulty for the lion-tail partners who are responsible for lifting movements.
Different from single sports, the dragon and lion dance is a teamwork sport, and it is basically impossible to achieve online training of "cloud lion dance".
From "lion's tail" partners to life partners, Vietnamese couples Anna Duong and Albert Nguyen watch videos at home during the pandemic to review the lion dances, but "it's completely incomparable to real training," Anna said.
Anna, who is currently in charge of the gong and drum soundtrack in the team, said: "We can only practice rhythm with chopsticks and clapping [at home], and there is nothing else to practice. ”
Wei Tong, a Malaysian Chinese immigrant who coaches the Junior Lion Dance In Jinshan, said they also tried the "Cloud Lion Dance" during the lockdown, but because of the limited amount of things they could practice, the original 2-3 hours of training could only be shortened to 45 minutes. Interestingly, this also includes more than ten minutes of Chinese Chinese character learning.
Only a few of the lion band are of Chinese descent, and the vast majority of members are European-Australians from the local community, but their lion dance performances also incorporate Chinese words posed with fruits and vegetables.
Tang Weiteng said that Chinese words such as "Fu", "Ji" and "Ping'an" are the knowledge points he will cover in the "Lion Dance Online Class". Understanding the composition of these words is not only a performance need, but also a cultural need.
Even though the "online lion dance" is not easy, people still find ways to increase the connection between teams through remote interaction.
The Melbourne-based Hongde Troupe has even conducted interstate training with the Lion Awakening Regiment from Sydney and Brisbane.
"It's not just physical condition, we also pay attention to everyone's mental and mental health when we meet online," said Alex Chiu, Zhou Jiaquan's lion dance coach.
In order to allow the members of the group to have some social activities during the period of home isolation, Andy Wang, the captain of the Melbourne Chinese Youth Association Lion Dance Team, said that they would also hold a cooking sharing session to make the otherwise boring life full of fun and love.
"During the epidemic, we found that some members were in a bad mental state and sometimes absent from online meetings, so we innovatively held various fun activities such as online cooking classes, hoping to encourage everyone to get together more [online] and ask each other about the latest situation."
"The lion dance is very important to us, but what we really care about is the players themselves."
Among these lion awakening groups, there are also overseas students who stayed in Australia alone during the epidemic.
Athesvara Dirghar, an Indian-born international student from Singapore, is one of them.
He said that during the lockdown, everyone would encourage and supervise each other through online "push-up challenges" and other ways, and these remote interactions and greetings made him not feel bad during the epidemic as an international student, and he also had a sense of belonging.
<h1>Train "Bubbles"</h1>
From the end of last year to the beginning of this year, many dragon and lion dance troupes slowly began their routine face-to-face training, hoping to prepare for the Spring Festival of the Year of the Ox.
After a long suspension, all the Lion Awakening Groups unanimously said that they were particularly excited and happy about the recovery of offline training, because the members were already like family members.
However, in order to ensure the health of each member, some awakening lion groups have adopted the form of "social bubbles", dividing everyone into smaller teams to train separately.
The bells of the Year of the Ox are about to ring, and despite the bumps and challenges of the past year, the members of the Lion Awakening Group are still full of expectations for the new year.
"The Year of the Ox is my own year of life, and I'm looking forward to it," Arthur Schwara Digger said.
"The upcoming Year of the Ox is actually the 'Golden Bull', and the money is rolling in!" Mr. Tang Weiteng said.
"Let the culture continue, hope that the ambition will last forever," Zhan Zhihao said.