Chinese New Year

Every year Shaun, myself and the children , celebrate Chinese New Year.

We Have in the past gone to China Town in Brisbane, eaten Chinese food from the stalls, purchased lucky charms for our cars, banners and decorations to hang at home.
We had fun sharing in buying different and unusual foods to share at home. Then we enjoyed the atmosphere of anticipation and excitement as we all waited for the Dragons and the lion dancing to commence.

The kids loved the Martial arts from club displays .
Following the club demonstrations the dragons run up and down the road being teased by the globe carrier and the drums and cymbals hammer out enough noise to scare any dragon away.

Then come the lions,..and every year the death defying feats seem to be more extreme and breath taking as the lions jump from platform to platform, a cultural bridge if you like suspended above the crowd and spanning the full length of the road.
The lion dance finale is extreme where the lions climb a pole to reach the lettuce high above the crowd. ...lots of oohs and ahhs ..Then the Grand Finale the Fireworks!!!!

This year we went to Dickson north of Canberra to enjoy Chinese New Year. We explored the shops and bought interesting things to try.

Sadly no stalls to buy banners or charms no noisy drums and dancing no Martial arts spectacle.
It was a very different celebration to the one held for an entire city in Brisbane. This celebration was staged in a club. and so it was more of a close knit community celebration like an extended family day in the pub.

No Chinese delicacies on the menu.

The martial arts performers were very skilled as they tripped each other up and deftly avoided the swords and knives each wielded, but none were Chinese, kinda lost something on me.. that mystery of ancient martial arts performed by a bearded Aussie with tats at the pub ..... wasn't quite the same, although they were very accomplished.

We had crackers in the form of tubes that sprayed confetti all over us, which the kids loved! the lion dancers had been competing at the Australian Championships all morning so when they arrived for their performance , they were tired, but very clever. Maintaining all that jumping and twisting in full silk costumes in the heat of the day to the beat of the drums, and the drummers were three girls from Perth who performed very skillfully indeed.

All of the performers were very friendly and showed Cedie how the eyes on their costumes worked and freely discussed how the competition was going.

It really was quite delightful sharing the spectacle with the community and was an experience we will treasure.