hi everyone

does anyone know what kinda of paint to use when painting on laser paper? i've noticed that acylic paint doesn't go on to the laser paper well at all because the laser paper is so smooth and glossy. i saw the siow heads and the paint they used but i'm not sure what it is. it looks like a real nice rich color that it relativily even. when i used acylic paint on it u can totally see the bruch marks and it doesn't coat the laser paper. u can still see where the paint is thin and see the shinny laser paper underneath the paint. it doesn't look good at all. i wanna stay away from oils because they are so hard to clean. does anyone have any suggestions?

~erick

Hello fellow liondancers,

sorry for putting an anouncement here, but I wonder if Willy from San Francisco is in the mailing list. Oy Willy, I'm from Indonesia. I saw your performance with Dicky and Yip, it was cool, heheheheee... I think Yip has told you bout me, huh?! Only we didn't have the chance to talk. Mail me, ok?! OK byeeeeeee.

care,

Vela

I am interested in those videos too. What were the titles again? How do I get them?

Vinh Nguyen

Hi all,

sorry for the late comment.. it's rather old topic. We 'burn' the drum under the sun at day to heat the skin up before performancing. When the weather is cold, the skin a little bit loose coz of the fat, our drum is not really a good made one. The sound isn't very clear, specially on rainy days or when the weather is cold. OK that's all, hope that helps.

care,

Vela

Hi-

Have you considered using spray laquer? You need a paint that will bind with the coating on the laser paper. Some types of spray paint will bind while others will not. Ask the paint dealer and ask the paper manufacturer for the recommendations they give on painting with their respective products.

Using an Airbrush, atomizer or spray can (not heavy coats) will ensure that you do not have any brush marks at all and a relatively smooth clean finish.

for those who are interested, I did a search of libraries that have Dr. Hu's "Chinese Lion Dance Explained" book in their collections and came up with the following:

CA CALIFORNIA POLYTECHNIC STATE UNIV CPS
CA OAKLAND PUB LIBR JRK
CA SAN FRANCISCO PUB LIBR SFR
CA SAN MATEO CNTY LIBR CZA
CA UNIV OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY CUY
MA HARVARD UNIV HLS
MI ANN ARBOR PUB LIBR EYH
MI MICHIGAN STATE UNIV EEM
NC DUKE UNIV LIBR NDD
NC WAKE FOREST UNIV EWF
UT SALT LAKE CITY PUB LIBR UUP

You should be able to convince your local public library (or university library if you're a student) to borrow this book for you, but occassionally there is a charge for this service.

Does anyone know how Dr. Hu is coming along on his next lion dance book? Last I heard some of his notes got burned in a fire a few years ago. Has he scrapped the project or is he still working on it?

Chris

Chris,

Dr Hu's house in Michigan burnt to the ground when he was at the Lion Dance Convention in San Francisco March 1999. The local railroad caused the fire with an overloaded train that produced sparks causing grass fires for several miles. Aside from the clothes that he had with him in San Francisco, everything else he had was lost in this fire. To date Dr. Hu has not been reimbursed even a penny and almost all his time is spent with lawyers trying to recover reimbursement from railroad. He is retired from teaching (Stanford, U of Washington, Cornell and U of Michigan) and does not have a source of income so the recovery of what he has lost including his house is of utmost importance to him. As to the research side, his 50,000 volume personal library with many rare books on martial arts and lion dancing are now gone along with over 160 of his unpublished manuscripts (including his new lion dance book). On his last Lion Dance book, he paid for all his own research (he was teaching at the time and had other sources of income) and the Chinese Performing Arts Foundation, San Francisco donated $30,000 after his research was done to help pay for the artwork/layout and other production costs in order to get the book published. To do the research and produce the art and layout for the next volume on Lion Dancing will now cost $100,000 to $150,000. Such books are sure money losers because the demand is only in the hundreds of copies and not even a thousand. Although many felt the $55 retail price tag on the last book was high, the publisher only receives half this amount on wholesale and considering the numbers printed and sold, it is doubtful they recovered their printing costs. So far no one has stepped forward with new funding so the next book is unlikely to be produced.

It is a shame that someone with Dr Hu's knowledge and expertise in this field is not actively researching and writing due to lack of funding. For us with this interest in lion dancing, he is considered a living "national treasure". If anyone is aware of grants or funding available for research and publishing in this field, pls let me know.

Thanks,

David Lei - Chinese Performing Arts Foundation, San Francisco

David,

Thanks for letting us know what happened to Dr. Hu. What a tragedy and a great loss, both to Dr. Hu personally and to the lion dance community. It's even more tragic to find out that it happened while he was lecturing at the conference.

If only we were independently wealthy...but I trust that his lawyers will be able to get a favorable ruling on his behalf.

Thank you and the CPAF for your funding of projects like these. Were you able to gather the old Chung Ngai members for a viewing of "I want to Be the Lion Head" yet?

Chris

jamieson

thanx for the infor but i want a brush on paint because i want to paint on the designs over the laser paper. i can't ask the paper manufaturer becuae i had the paper sent from china and someone over there help me buy the paper.

Well, if the acrylic isn't working for you, you might have to use something that you can add in thin coats. Laser paper is usually for thermal printing and generally is not used to paint on. You could use ink but I don't know what kind of coverage you want.

a couple of other alternatives may be-
1. use a powder based pigment mixed with glycerin as the vehicle for the pigment and experment with the measures until you get acceptable fluidity in the paint.

2.Use a gaouche, which is basically a poster paint you can by in art stores and use it at different thickness until you get what you want.

Other than that I'm stumped! I hope it works out for you.

Chris,

The old group of Chung Ngai only get together once every few years so have not shown your video to the group yet. I totally forgot the content of this film. Boy did we look like geeks! There will be lots of laughter and kidding when it is finally shown. Will also be some sadness as one of the performer featured died three years ago. The Mr. Lei mentioned by the kids is not me but Greg Li, now a lawyer. One of my very few american born friends that not only speaks Cantonese and Mandarin, but writes as well as any foreign born. Would like to think the lion dance club had something to do with his desire to master the language. He was the translator at last year's lion dance conference and everyone commented how smooth and precise his translations were. There were no camcorders in '72 and 8mm movies were expensive and incovenient. Thanks for making this tape available as it is the only footage we now have of that era. This is incentive for me to organize a reunion Christmas party this year.

Thanks,

David

Hello Chuck,

For drum stands you can go with jamieson, and chris's plans of how to go about building a drum stand. These are all good plans, anyway.

For me, you can call it lazy man's way hahahaha. You just need to go to the food service supplies company in your area. It's either being sold at the company or they can order it for you. It's usually being used in a restaurant or any food service establishment or business. It's actually a square cart with wheels on it, and there' s a nice handle attached to it. So, anybody can push it around. I seen a kung fu club in Hawaii do it, they put the gong on the middle part of the bar. You can use those steel wires to attach the gong to the bar. The drum will easily fit on the cart area, ofcoarse you just need to get a small piece of wood or anything to support the tilting of the drum on the cart area. Then the members who are free and not playing anything. Can help push the cart around by holding the sides of the bar handle. Or if you're only going to stay one place and not walk around. Then you can just get the universal drum dolly with rims to prevent anything that's on the dolly from falling off. I have it myself and it fits you just need to get something to support it in a tilted position. You can get the drum dolly from the same place. At any food service supply store. The drum dolly actually is used to put those plastic garbage cans on. That's how I got the idea. You just need to make yourself a gong stand, that's all. The cart with the bar handle attached to it, is actually used to hold or store racks of plastic cups or glass cups on it.

And if anybody has other ideas that's also good too. Take care, bye

Laine

Hi! I am just new to the list,if anyone could help, may I know the name and address of lion head maker aside from Sifu Siow and Sifu Lim Meng Kok in Malaysia.Thanks

Arnold Buenviaje

Welcome to the list!

The only other lion head manufacturer I know of in Malaysia is Eastern Lion Head Manufacturers. Their contact information is:

Christopher Chong
F31,1st Floor, Pandan Safari Lagoon
1, Jalan Perdana 6/10a Pandan Perdana
55300 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Tel/Fax No: 603-9645576
Hand phone: 6-016-2836936
Email: easternlion@hotmail.com

I haven't ever seen a lion made by them so I can't answer any questions about looks, quality, design, or price.

If you need to look up manufacturers in other places check the Lion's Cave website at:

http://www.oocities.org/lionscave1/Equipment.html

Chris

Greg Li was a great translator. The only thing I felt he did not translate well was the terms "pook gai" and "ho-lan". but other than that he did a great job.

Thanks Chris for the input about the manufacturer of lion head in Malaysia.As of now may I know how many people are active in this mail list and from what country are most of you guys,if possible ,maybe some of you could make a short introduction of yourself and background you have in lion dance or maybe martial arts.

Arnold

Hi Arnold,

Things like introductions and personal backgrounds in martial arts/lion dancing are usually done when a person first joins the list. If you're interested you can check through the archives of the list at:

http://www.oocities.org/lionscave1/Archives.html

I actually encourage anyone who joined the list in the past year or so to go through the archives and see what's been discussed--there's a wealth of knowledge available in them, and answers to some of the questions that were recently reasked by different people. It may take a while to read through all four years worth, but I think you'll find it worth while. I've even put previous years' archives in a zip file that you can download and read at your convenience without having to be online.

Enjoy!

Chris

Hi All,

The Lion looked very good, but I could not see a beard on it, so I contacted James Wong to ask him if the Lion had a beard that was not visible in the photo. His reply was that the Lion does not have a beard. This is a really too bad - for as we all know - you cannot have a Southern Lion without a beard! I hope in the future he will make them with the beard, for I would really like to purchase one.

'Kam' - Wes Cameron

Hey everyone,

Hehe, I guess Vela kind of gave it away but I've been in Malaysia for the last few weeks to pick up our order of lions and to study with Siow Sifu and his students. It's been great! The highlight of the trip was actually a little trip we took to Indonesia to witness their first national championships. It was there where I was asked to play the drum for Yip and Dicky (of world first runner up Khuan Loke) as they performed a little exhibition on the jongs. Well, maybe not 'little' because in our last performance they executed both the single and double suicide dives on the jongs, and many consider them to have the best suicide in the business! It was really quite an honor that they asked me since I am still so new in Hok San style, as evidenced by the many mistakes I made. But I also met a lot of cool people there, including Vela's older sister, but unfortunately didn't get a chance to meet Vela herself! =( But Vela has an excellent team that has gone very far in their training. In about one month they learned almost all of the Hok San drumming set and they were simply rocking. Their stunts are also progressing really quickly and I hope to see them go really far in the next competition.

I was very impressed with Indonesia's teams - quite a few of them have a lot of potential. There was a big range in skill at this competition, though, as some teams were not that solid. But overall I am amazed that Indonesia is ahead of the US in terms of organization and cooperation. We can learn a lot from Indonesia! Unfortunately, HBT (representing Indonesia at Genting this summer) was not there, as they were training for the upcoming world championships in China this month.

Speaking of which, I got a chance to watch KSK train at Genting - let me just say that if you thought team C couldn't take their stunts any further, you're wrong! ;) Man, this one stunt they executed made my eyes bulge. Dang!

Malaysia overall is an excellent place to visit, but I think it was mostly because of Siow Sifu's and Yip's hospitality. Siow Sifu is a city boy through and through, and he knows all the cool places in KL and around here (and he's a pretty mean cat in rush hour traffic!). Many thanks go to him and all his students/friends who I got a chance to meet. Oh, if you really want to get him a cool gift, he likes 'guy' things - pens, watches, sunglasses, and especially old cameras. Hehe.

In return for all the things Siow Sifu did for me, I tried to help him out in return by transcribing almost the entire Hok San drumming system into western notation. I attempted to do this before but I didn't know if I had the correct drum patterns (and I found out that I didn't before). But with Sifu there I painstakingly transcribed everything he asked for, for all three instruments (drum, cymbals, gong). I hope to edit them and get them into digital format soon (either by scanning them or with Layton's help) so I can offer it to the list.

Well, that's all from me now. Good to see the list so active in my time away.

Best,

Willy

hey everyone

y is it so dead in here?? oh well i was wondering how big your trucks are that u guys use in the parade? cause like our school can't find a truck and we were thinking bout renting one but like i'm not sure what size is concidered to be big enough. like what trucks do u guys have? like what model? and like what are the dimentions of the bed? cause we need to fit like 6 people in the back. so like if u guys have any suggestions please let me know. and like if anyone knows a specific model of a really big pick up truck that be great and where i can rent a pick up. thanx

~erick

we normally rent full size american trucks like those xlt extra cab. don't know the dimensions, i think about 10 foot long.but we can fit all the equipment and cram in about 10-13 heads while transporting from point a to b. For the parade, you can fit all the equipment and 1 drummer, 5 cymbol + gong, and a few others. Hope that helps

thanx that did help. but would u happend to knwo what specific model of truck that was??

and also where did u guys rent the truck? like which company??

Erick!

We used to use several cars or sometimes a van or truck plus several cars. We could fit a lion head plus a drum and two instrument cases in the back of an escort. Most of our drums were small, though, about a yard across.

We used a van or regular pickup w/cloth cover for a drum almost 5 feet across, but it was impossible to bring it in to the majority of indoor sites so we stopped bringing it.

Troupe members used their cars (or borrowed them) and we reimbursed them for mileage.

-Lars

Hi,

From the San Francisco Lunar New Year Parade and Festival Committee's perspective, undecorated trucks in the parade is a huge headache, especially for the TV zone. Sticking flags onto the truck does not make the truck attractive enough especially when truck has big U-Hull or Budget Rental signs on its sides. In many cases the musicians are not in full costumes, while others are smoking, goofing around or with entire families just riding in the back that has nothing to do with making their teams look professional nor entertaining the 500,000 spectators and millions on TV. Since most groups come into the parade annually and often rent trucks for other events during the year, we would like to see lion dance groups put more thoughts and efforts into decorating these trucks in such a manner that they can use the decorations for several years. The musicians should be an integral part of the performance showing energy, joy and enthusiasm. They should be really into the music and rocking and bobbing from pure joy (at least project this feeling to the audience). If this were the case, we would feature these trucks and musicians more on TV and in the parade. The parade committee has float builders available as consultants to help you with some of your ideas and possibly some funding if your group will agree to put in efforts into this area. Pls e-mail the parade committee if you have interest in pursuing this: CNYPARADE@cs.com

Rgds,

David

does anyone know if Tat Wong of San Francisco is going to have his international martial arts and lion dance championship next year? I know it's is every 4 years.The last one was in 1997.

hello all,

what are your inputs on this. How would you show the eight expressions with the lion's head?? Happiness, Anger, Sadness, Joy, Motion, Silence, Scared, and Suspicion

That is a very good question. I am new at this. Can some of you experienced folks help us out?

Thanks!

Vinh Nguyen

Hello Nguyen!

This is just my idea..

1. Speed : for example - happy or joy; the lion's head moves fiercely. Pull and push the head a little but fast. Make it look at the subject it likes. Try the "number 8" head movement by Master Siow, it's good. Then blink the eyes, open the mouth a bit. Play the tail, jump around. Surely you need power to do this, tiring. While sad ; head moves slowly, blink the eyes slowly, few times, not full close, just a half. Take a pose like sitting. Or else.. just use your imagination.

2. Take a pose, timing : stop few times when you think the pose needs stressing, you've got to make it clear for the audience.

3. Tail movement : happy ; play the tail, sway your bottom a little, small jumps, kicking, sitting, both legs jump (like kicking the air), etc. Sad : make a slow hand movement (by liontail), seems like the lion is breathing very slow, constantly.

4. Co-operation between bead and tail : take a nice pose. Imagine dog's expression. For example - scared ; shake all body, like when you are in a cold area.

5. Music - arrange a good one that match the expression.

Hope that helps!

care,

Vela

Hi, this sounds like fun!

well, here's my spin on how to bring the lion to life with these expressions. The head is important in expressivness but the whole Lion is used as well as the dancers.

Happiness- Mouth 3/4open with the head facing forward and looking side to side and nodding slightly.

Anger- Mouth Wide open and snapping shut intermittently while shaking the head and approaching or charging that which angers the lion.

Sadness- slow stepping with the head hung down and eyes half closed, slow sweeping motion side to side with the head.

Joy, eyes wide and bright and alert, stepping very crisply and higher than normal walk. little shakes of the head here and there.

Motion- i don't know what you mean by this one.

Silence- mouth closed, body still but relaxed in posture. Head turns slowly side to side as if looking around.

Scared- Mouth opening and closing slightly (like when you have dry mouth) eyes wide open with rapid blinks now and again, dancers legs shaking (knees knocking) and look to what is scaring you and then look to the onlookers as if to tell them "I'm Scared! Can you help me?!"

Suspicion- is very much like "caution" approach the object the you "suspect" and sniff at it moving in slowly and moving away, move around the object (table, chair, person, buddha, choi chiang) Jump away from the object of suspicion and hold a solid stance facing it, slowly approach again and brush your foot at the object like a cat plays with a ball of wool.

My Si Fu ahs given me these through training in Lion Dance, but they vary a little from dancer to dancer. The use of the eyes and mouth are important in any expression but the body really helps convey the emotion by what it does in tandem with the head motion.

bye 4 now

David