Reviews for Shops in
China

The following reviews are independently written by people who have visited or purchased from the shops listed. They are provided for informational and review purposes only and should not be seen as either endorsements for or discouragements against using these vendors by myself or the Lion's Cave Website. If you are interested in purchasing Lion Dance equipment it is your responsibility to check into the details for yourself. I hope you find the following information helpful, but remember that everybody's opinion is different and product quality can vary depending on a number of different factors--so what one person experienced may or may not be true of the store now.

Comparisons

Foshan Musical Instrument Art Factory
Sherman Wong, Tue, 06 May 1997 21:53:32 -0700
The cheapest place would be from Foshan and they've been pretty good about matching the colors we specify. Here a trick. The Foshan factory claims they can follow a color scheme from a photograph almost exactly (about 90%). If you have pictures of nice HK of Malaysian heads, you can send them those pictures. What I do for our club is scan a photo of a lion into photoshop and modify the colors to whatever we want to order. I was pretty amazed how the lions came out. We even specify the type of fur on the lion head and also what kind of tail (our club always orders the long sausage-like animal fur tail). Of course you also have to specify the size lion. Most adlt lions are number 2 - 1 being the largest. Usually, 1, 2, and 3 are all the same price but shipping costs will vary. When you order the pants, you need to give them an outer seam dimension and waist size. They also have shoes if you want them. You'll need to specify your shoe size in centimeters. Most importantly, you'll have to order all this in Chinese. The Foshan factory even has a FAX but it needs to be turned on manually so you have to tell the guy who answers the phone to turn on the machine and then you press the start button. Also, the phone is shared by a whole bunch of people so only certain times of the day will you get the right person who can help you with the lion ordering and have access to the fax machine. I think the last time I Faxed orders, I called when it was about 2:30 AM in China.

Anyway, thats the cheapest way to go. They're also very quick because this factory is huge like a football field. All the other factories in HK, Singapore, Malaysia, Macau, are "hole-in-the-wall" operations. The China factory is continually producing lion heads so as soon as you specify the color, they can paint it in a week. Other companies don't usually have unpainted heads waiting to be painted. They are usually made to order.

The prices we paid were something like $254 for a head and tail - size 1,2,and 3. The crating and shipping was another $250 for a size 2 to Hawaii and about $300 for a size 1. This was from the Foshan Factory and all our correspondances were through fax and letters and a few telephone calls.

Ninjaboy23@aol.com, Thu, 30 Nov 2000 18:08:49 EST
I have purchased over a dozen lions from this company and AM very satisfied. The gentleman who always takes care of me is Mr. Ha Chi Sing. They can make any kind of lion you request. I have ordered traditional long tail lions, with traditional paintings, as well as the more modern competition style lions with sheeps fur and sequened tails. The great thing is that you can specify how heavy you'd like the heads to be and they match the weight almost to a tee. As for their drums, i have asked for drums to be custom made without any paint on the leather and with my logo painted on the drum and they did a beautiful job. I highly recommend this company. As someone mentioned earlier chinese language is a must.

If you've been to or purchased equipment from a store in this area and would like to write a review, email it to me and I'll include it here the next time I update the page.