alittlepoison

chinese new year is red and gold and black like the german flag.

there is a goofy looking girl sat at the base of one of the pagoda gateway things that mark the boundaries of china town. she is etching chinese new year into a small square of bronze for lithographic reproduction if she’s ever glum and wants a chinese new year to cheer her up.

there is a very bad magician in a very bad suit doing strange things with plastic tubes and handkerchiefs to a deafening soundtrack of synthesised birdsong. i keep hoping he is going to pull chinese new year out of a hat but instead he has an abortive attempt at a trick with some chopsticks and a newspaper.

there are two gangs of lion dancers working the streets and stores. i think they are like rival hoodlums in prohibition america, each sticking to their agreed turf but violence could break out any second if someone bootlegs the wrong moonshine sake to the wrong dim sumerry.

at one end of the street are the masonic chinese lion dance society. that is what it says on their red t-shirts above some masonic device involving callipers and an eye. this is very strange. their lion dancing is lacklustre and there is a much bigger crowd around the hung gar wau shu martial arts academy lion dancers at the other end of the street. they all wear kung fu trousers and silk kung fu belts and fingerless gloves and studded leather wristbands and look like they’d kick the Freemasons’ collective ass given half a chance.

the lion dance is a very good dance, but probably no fun if you are the lion’s hind quarters, stooped over and blindly following the lion’s fore quarters, whose movements are frankly erratic.

the sexy kung fu girl on the percussion wagon bangs a big drum and henchmen bang cymbals. the kung fu bootleggers clear a path through the happy crowd to the next store. the lion dances like an enormous drunk caterpillar into the store to deliver that sweet bathtub booze. one hoodlum stands just out of sight inside the entrance, his arm extended out the door signalling to the others with mysterious hand gestures. the lion eventually re-emerges having conferred prosperity and hard liquor upon the shopkeepers and new year is made happy.