The Last Lion Dance

When you pose for this photograph - one arm on your daughter’s shoulder and the other arm gripped tightly by your son - you don’t know it will be the last lion dance you ever arrange at your parents’ house in your childhood hometown of Ipoh. All you know is you’re hot and sweaty, like everyone else gathered around you, though not as hot and sweaty as the schoolboys standing at either end of your group. You know that the two boys are panting from the exertions of their recently completed dance, even if you can’t see them, their torsos hidden inside their hollow lion’s heads. You know the lion dancers, together with their eighteen or so other friends from the local Chinese school, have been performing all morning at other residences, at shoplots, in the nearby mall, and have other performances scheduled, back to back, for the rest of the week. You know the next fifteen days of Chinese New Year will be celebrated noisily and joyfully as it always is back home in Malaysia: with festive food, family and friends, and firecrackers.