At 04:21 PM 7/29/96 -0700, you wrote:
>>Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 17:18:24 -0700
>>To: ldl
>>From: layton
>>Can you still get Unicorns made or is this an old fellow? What is the
>dance like and is anyone else still doing it.. I've just seen it once ,
>but never performed... Does the unicorn have the same traditions as the
>lion. I guess Dr. Hu's book must have the answers but this(e-mail) method
>of research is a lot more interesting.

We just got a pair of unicorns two years ago from Hong Kong. Most Lion Head factories in Hong Kong and Fatsan can make unicorns specially. The unicorn dance is explained in Dr. Hu's book and there was a group called the Young Chinese Physical Culture Assn. in Hawaii which played just the Unicorn. They were pople who formed their own club separating from the original Chinese Physical Culture Assn in Hawaii. They did not want to be rivals so they decided to play the unicorn to compliment the lion dancing of the original Chinese Physical Culture Assn. Some stories say that the unicorn was an earlier form of lion and that the canton lion is something that derived from the unicorn. The movements are quite different. The footwork and head movements are fast. The horse is not the traditional "ma" from kung fu practices. Depending on what village the dancers originate from, the horse stance is either very high or very low in a squating position. We play the high horse. The unicorn tends to in a straight-ahead darting motion mixed in with wild swings to the side. The head goes side to side as the head player moves laterally in a "crab walking" type of step. Traditionally, some stories say that the unicorn was not a Kung Fu performer's animal. Instead it was performed by musicians. That is why they play the unicorn with the oprah trumpet and cymbols and other theatrical instruments.

>>Over 20 years ago I got to go to Hawaii for the first time to Perform with
>my teacher(Lai Hung). We were invited by a Sifu Jey Tong( spelling?). He
>was a Choy Lei Fut and White Crane teacher. He invited a Grandmaster from
>HK to come to Hawaii to perform.. His name was Hong Lau.( I think he was 75
>or eighty at the time) He is gone now. But I always wonder is Sifu Jey
>Tong is still active?? Any Idea if he is still active. Sifu Tong had
>relative or an uncle who had a herb shop in Chinatown...

I asked my teacher and he knows Sifu Jey Tong. He was also known as Chuck Jey and yes as far as we know, he is still around in Hawaii. He is not a very active person in teaching anymore. For some reason, he needed to leave the action for a while. (That's all I can say)

The 1996 World Lion Dance Championship was held on the 24th of July 1996 at Genting Highlands, Malaysia.

The unconfirm results are:

First: Malaysia A
Second: Malaysia B
Third: Hong Kong

Congratulations!

Will contact you all later with more details.

I am glad to hear that there are some people who do the "unicorn" dance somewhere out there!

I have seen the dance in Malaysia and it is interesting to note that in Malaysia only a gong and a huge pair of cymbals are used for producing the music. From my understanding, the "unicorn" is indigenous to the Hakka (a Chinese dialect group) people. The "unicorn" or "Chee-ling" in Mandarin ("Kirin" in Japanese) is suppose to be an animal with a Dragon's head, scales and tail but with the deer's legs and hoofs. It was suppose to be a very "holy / kind" animal and some ranks it above the lion! One theory of the dance and shape of the "unicorn" is that it came from the giraffe(seen by commoners in the emperor's palace).

George W H Chan wrote:
>The 1996 World Lion Dance Championship was held on the 24th of July
>1996 at Genting Highlands, Malaysia.
>The unconfirm results are:
>First: Malaysia A
>Second: Malaysia B
>Third: Hong Kong
>Congratulations!
>Will contact you all later with more details.

Good to see someone post this. Were you there George? Results as follows:
First: Malaysia (Kun Seng Keng C Team)-still the benchmark
Second: Malaysia (Xuan Wu Tian (hanyu pingying) from Malacca)-Brilliant performance, absolutely spectacular!
Third: Singapore (Kiu Sen Kun (spelling?)) Very nice!
Fourth: Malaysia (Kun Seng Keng A team)- Great performance, unlucky
Fifth to Eigth: Hong Kong A, C teams, Phillipines and Singapore (Boon Lay CC)
Ninth and Tenth:Hong Kong B and Maccau. Maccau had a minor slip in the finals. Killed their chance. Otherwise great performance too.

How did I know so much? I was there, representing Australia. We had a major fall in the preliminary. Lion tail was hospitalised. That was the end of it for us...oh well.. they said there's always next time.

To Peter in Oz (Perth?),
>Good to see someone post this. Were you there George? Results as follows:

Unfortunately I was not there as you can see from my wrong results! I heard the results through other friends/family back in Malaysia and I'm sorry to post the wrong results!

>How did I know so much? I was there, representing Australia. We had a
>major fall in the preliminary. Lion tail was hospitalised. That was the
>end of it for us...oh well.. they said there's always next time.

Good on you all! I hope the lion tail is alright. Was there another Aussie team from Melbourne/Sydney? If you all are from Perth I think I heard of you all from Master Siow earlier this year. So since you were there can you share with us some of the interesting scenes/moments/your views etc, of the competition?

Hi Everyone,

thanks for posting the the results. Would anyone care to document the scoring rules and some of the routines of the teams

Where in Malaysia was this event held?

Stephen

PS. Peter, sorry to hear about your tail. Hope he is okay.

Hi All.
Re my opinions and views of the 96 World Championship( held at the Genting Highland Resort in Kuala Lumpur):

- Malaysia is still the strongest country. They are still in a league of their own. Want to see good comp? Get the Malaysian National Championship videos... Rest of the world is catching up but not quite there yet I feel...

- With due respect, I felt the 3 teams from Hong Kong (HK Chinese Martial Arts Association) was a bit disappointing. Team C was the best I thought. Good performances nevertheless!

-Great performance (big improvements) by the Philippines as I expected 'coz they looked good in '95 (HK). They had the same idea as us doing the 180 degree jump on the steel ropes. They had the luxury of using their own prop which they were able to tighten the ropes to maximum tension. Important in doing jumps. Loose ropes is better (nicer) for just walking. We were using shared props and have less control over various things...rope tension for one (we made that jump though!).

-One China team was not as competitive, however the other team was very good. Unfortunately, they fell too...The first day of Preliminary comp, 5 out of 8 teams had major fall (classified as falling off the prop).

-Good showing by the French team, keep up the good work!

-One Japanese team had a lot of potential...great skills but need more practice (major fall in prelim), look out for them. Leader is a great guy. His lion dancing injuries rival any war veteran...e.g. 5 hours in coma when he hit his head on the concrete floor falling from 2.5m. (made my own war(lion dance) wounds looked trivial!)

-Maccau was very unlucky to have the minor fall in the finals. It was during a very easy move. They must be very disappointed. Excellent performance otherwise.

-S'pore is always near the top but they really need to pull out something special, otherwise it's hard to see them toppling the Malaysians.

-Siow Sifu, a close friend and chief instructor of the champion team, always comes up with the little extras to win. Like I said, still the benchmark. However, the Malacca (a state of Malaysia) team that came second was absolutely spectacular. Hard to explain their moves here. Get the video! All I can say here is that they had many continuous jumps (high degree of difficulty) and very innovative moves. Spectacular "plucking the green" too. They probably were the crowd's favourite.

Apart from learning a lot at a comp like this, the thing I enjoyed most was meeting all the people from other teams... they all seem to be really nice!

I probably haven't given any clearer picture of the comp. You really need to see the video. Too hard trying to explain routines in words. I don't know when the video will be out but when they come out, they are usually sold in retail outlets in Malaysia. I'll keep everyone posted.

Will try to post the rules of the comp but very busy at the moment...no promises. Ciao!

+___________________________________________________________________________+
Peter Lee Institute for Child Health Research
Division of Cell Biology
email: peterl@ AUSTRALIA

+___________________________________________________________________________+

Hi Peter,

thanks for the summary of the show. I enjoyed it. It is hard to really give a feel without the video.

You mentioned that it will go on sale in Malaysia. Do you plan to get a copy? Will it only be in PAL format? Do you think it will be available in S'pore? I'd love to get a hold of it.

I have a question about the competition. Do they judge how well the music coordintes with the Lion? What do they look for? Just a feel or do they observe the special beats? (ie. 3star 7star etc.) Do they also judge the musical score?

As a budding drummer, I'm very interested in this stuff.

One last thing, do you know what Kung Fu style (if any) the Malaysian teams (especially Malacca) practice?

Thanks for all the info.

Stephen.

Hi all/Stephen again,
>You mentioned that it will go on sale in Malaysia.
>Do you plan to get a copy? Will it only be in PAL
>format? Do you think it will be available in S'pore?
>I'd love to get a hold of it.

I think it'll only be in PAL format. Is it a problem converting to your system? I've got no experience in this. I'm not sure if the video will be available in S'pore although I expect so. If you've got sources in S'pore, e.g. lion dance schools, then I'm sure you'll be able to get it there.

>I have a question about the competition. Do they judge
>how well the music coordintes with the Lion? What do
>they look for? Just a feel or do they observe the special
>beats? (ie. 3star 7star etc.) Do they also judge the
>musical score?

Most definitely. One of the very important section of the total marks. They look for things like timing between cymbals/gong/drum players (this's got to be spot on), how well it coordinates with the lion (as you mentioned), other technicalities such as softness, loudness etc. They don't mark specifically on things like 7 star. Some of these type of drumming is more traditional and is not suited to competition performance. Since you're a drummer, listen carefully to any World Championship tapes you might get hold of (94M'sia, 95HK etc) while looking at it's coordination with the lion and you'll understand what I mean. Last but not least, marks are awarded for actions by the instrument players e.g. coordinated rolling on floor, jumping on drums, patterns while playing. When you get the 96 Comp tape, look out for the Malacca's gong player. Young boy; talk of the competition. The most entertaining gong player I've ever seen.

>One last thing, do you know what Kung Fu style (if any)
>the Malaysian teams (especially Malacca) practice?

The Champion team (KSK) is a lion dance school and they do not concentrate on kung fu. Malacca-? Many good schools now are purely lion dance schools. They may teach kung fu basics such as horse-stands (still important I feel, for balance etc) but they do not spend much time on other aspects of kung fu.

Hope this helps.

Hi everyone!
If anybody is interested,I have in my possetions some lion dance videos which I am willing to dub. Most of my tapes are from Malaysia and most are commercially available. However, I don't have the most recent '96 World Championship video as they (in Malaysia) usually release them near the Chinese New Year! The titles are originally in chinese and I will try to translate and simplify it. They are also in the PAL/VHS system but I guess this is not a problem for you guys with a multi-system video/TV. Alternately you can transfer it into your NTSC system in the US. However since I am WAY down here in New Zealand shipping fee might be real costly. Anyway, there are;

1) 1992 World Lion Dance Championship.
This is the first world lion dance championship competition held in Hong Kong. Most of it consist of the competition show done by TVB of Hong Kong. Highlights of the 8 best teams are shown, including some songs by HK stars. At the back of the tape there are some hand held camera footage of the full dance of the Malaysian and Chinese teams. the quality of the tape is degrading due to its age, but it is still watchable. (~ 120 mins)

2) 10th Malaysian Dragon and Lion Dance National Championship.(1992)
Organize by the Wu-Su (Kung Fu) Association of Malaysia. Contains only the Lion dance part. Hand held camera quality. Same problem with the age, but still watchable. (~ 120 mins)

3) Lion Dance Performances (1992/3)
Competition style performances involving 6 teams invited by Master Siow. Includes the 3 teams(A, B, C) of Kun Seng Kung. Same thing with the age. (~ 120 mins)

4) Chinese New Year Lion Dance Performances (1992/3)
Performances by a Lion Dance team in Johor, Malaysia. Includes a competition style performance and other different and interesting style of "greens". (~ 90 mins)

5) Kun Seng Kung tour of Sabah (1995)
Kun Seng Kung, involving teams that have won many Lion Dance competition (World champions 92, 93, 95,96) and trained by Master Siow, toured Sabah ( a state in Malaysia) in 1995. This video includes 3 competition style performances( teams A, C and a junior team),a 24- drum performance and Master Siow's drum performance. Master Siow's drumming secession is fantastic and gives a good demonstration of one of his speciallity-the Hock San 18 style drumming technique. This drumming style is catching on and is the unofficial standardize drumming style of competitions. However, The audio quality of this tape is bad, and towards the end the sound drops to almost nil. But if the TV volume is turned to the max. you can still hear it. (~120 mins)

6) 1995 International Lion and Dragon Dance in Zheng Chen (China)
The first such event. Includes the highlights from the 3 Malaysian ('96 world champs no.1&4) , 2 Chinese and 1 Singaporean lion dance team ('96 world champs no.4). Also included are the 3 competiting dragon dance team (2 Chinese and a Singaporean team), and extracts of Master Siow's interview on the Lion Dance. Hand held video, and the colours are a bit off. (~ 120 mins)

7) Singapore International Lion Dance Performances (1995)
Includes teams from Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, France and Taiwan. (~ 180 mins)

8) Invitational Lion Dance Competition in Seremban, Malaysia (1995)
Includes the 1996 2nd place World championship lion dance teams. (~ 190 min)

9) 7th National Malaysian Lion Dance Competition (1995)
Organize by the Malaysian Lion Dance Association and includes the teams mentioned in video no.8('96 world champs no 2 & 4) but the overall competiton quality is higher. The best video I have (interms of video and competiton quality) and HIGHLY recomended. (Peter Lee, is this the video you mentioned?) Also includes one "surprising" lion dance team.(~ 300 mins)

For those who want to get the original videos I can provide you with some of the video distributers' addresses. Also note that the teams' technique do vary (improve) between years.

For those who are interested do e-mail me your address so that I can check the shipping fee and inform you all of the costs. Do contact me if there's any questions/problems.

Bye.

George Chan

The list itself is a great service. Thanks for putting it together. What is your plan for distributing the tapes? (Maybe I missed it in the email)

Are you going to copy them yourself and then charge us the cost of the blank tape + shipping or do you have another plan?

I'm in the US and our team is interested in some of the tapes. I can probably transfer them to NTSC but I'm not sure. Do you know if they are available in Singapore or Johor? I have relatives there. Iwill need to know the Chinese names though.

Anyways, any help you can give me I'd appreciate. I have copied Cory and Chris since I have traded tapes with them and they will probably be interested.

Stephen

Video no.2, 3 and 4 is released around the 93-95 period (not 92/93 period as mentioned earlier)

>From: clow@mail.sdsu.edu (C-Fu)
> Subject: LDL: 7 Stars & a lion dance FAQ
> Bcc: Lion Dance List
> Okay, since nobody else seems to want ot touch this, I'll give it a shot
>- some of you others
> who have more experience with this can add to it & correct me.

Rob Teng wrote:
>Question: do the following term sound familiar:
>high drum
>seven star (short and long)

You and Rob Teng both are right! The seven stars and the moon is also right, and also the seven starts is also a drum techiniqque which is the long way when the lion gets up, or at the parades!

Please send all replies to crazyguy1@

Hi i am Kiley Wong from chicago! Would anybody like to trade wavs of each others drum work? or pictures? i would Love to trade! And if you need a picture scanned you can send it to me i will scan it and retun it to you or free!

> From: crazyguy1@
> Hi i am Kiley Wong from chicago! Would anybody like to trade wavs of each
> others drum work? or pictures?

As a budding drummer, I would love to do this. The question is how. I have yet to figure out a way to do this over email. Maybe if I can get a site to ftp movie files...

At the seminar we had, Si-Sook was just playing around and I saw how far I still have to go in drumming. truely remarkable.

Besides the beats, there are the different levels of intensity, matching the movements to the lion and stylistic nuances like arm movements and stick throwing.

I'm open to try out ideas.

For pictures, we are beginning to put together our web site and should be ready shortly. Don't hold your breath though. We are all pretty busy around here.

Stephen.

Hello,
Nice to meet u at internet !
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Hi Everyone,

things have been kind of slow on this list so I thought I would start a new thread a see how it goes.

Does anyone have good liondance stories they would like to share? I haven't been around so long so I don't havee that many but I'll share one I heard...

It was Chinese New Year and a restaurant had hired two lion Dance teams to perform but did not tell each of the teams. Team A had the 11:30-12:00 slot and Team B had the 12:00-12:30 slot.

Well as usual, things didn't start quite on time and when 11:55 rolled around, it was clear that team A would not be finished at 12:00 but Team B had arrived and was ready to go.

Protocol would have Team B ask Team A when they would finish and inform them that they were scheduled to be on at 12:00. Instead, Team B just started drumming at precisely 12:00 but from a ways away and started lion dancing towards the restaurant.

Team A's leader, noticing the interruption, immediately signaled his team into tactical maneuvers. As Team B got close, Team A (who had three lions vs. team B's two lions) started circling Team B and wouldn't let them move any further. Team B quickly realized that they were out numbered and out classed so they went into sleeping lion.

You can imagine the scene. The audience thought it was part of the show. It was a tense moment for all until Team B went to sleep. Team A then continued with theie show and took even extra longer for the insult.

Team B stayed dormant until Team A had completely left. To this day Team B will always give respect to Team A when they meet.

Note: Obviously, I heard this story from the Team A perspective.

Did anyone enjoy this story? I know I did when I heard it. (though I may not be as good of a story teller) I'l love to hear other stories from all of you out there.

Hi everyone!

Thanks for that interesting story Steven. I have one here a bit different as it concerns firecrackers.

Well, I started lion dancing with my highschool team in Malaysia back in 1988. At that year's Chinese New Year we went around town "plucking greens" for our highschool. That year, the firecracker ban was lifted for the first time and we were expecting a much tougher year, and we were not disapointed.

Everything went well, until we reach one of my relative's place. As it happens most of my family were visiting there, and the whole team relaxed because, like me, we thought that they will not treat us too badly. Unfortunately, there was one of my relative there who was not really keen on sparring us. As soon as the dance started, he started pouring down waves and waves of firecrackers. These were bunches of 500 sticks medium size crackers, and he was throwing them as fast as he could light the fuses with an inscent. It was a house on stilts and he was throwing them down from the second floor aiming at the lion head. We were all young highschool student and at one point the lion tail bolted, the smoke was suffocating him and the explosion finally broke his nerve after 5 minutes of continuous bombarding. I was not schedule to perform that session but I took the tail(I was train as a lion head). Everyone in my relative's house pleaded for him to stop but it was useless.

Finally, the bombardment stopped with the ending of the performance. Everyone in the team were really angry(luckily no one was hurt), especially me as I also felt the embarassement by having this incident happening my relative home. Suddently, as we were packing up, a series of "explosion" sound came out from inside the house. Everybody in the team stared to cheer and clap. It was actually rude to do so, but our frustration and anger got thr better of us. Later, my family told me that at the end of the performance that relative carelessly left the inscent(for lighting the fuses) on the pile of fire crackers(in those days many keep 50 -100 bunces of firecrackers) and like a time bomb 3-5 bunches went off together near him. He only got slightly burn in one of his legs, but at least he had a taste of how it was like at the receiving end.

The ban on fire cracker was only lifted for another year and after that it was totally banned. Although there are still illegal firecrackers around, lion dancing in Malaysia is a lot safer since.

I hope you enjoy the story and will contribute something to everyone. By the way, as a relatively small minority here in Christchurch, New Zealand, it is hard to get lion dancing going. Most of my team members are students from overseas(including me), and might leave here one day. It is very difficult to get the local people(especially young people) here to join in, as the local chinese community is not that active. Is the situation similar? Any advise?