rat à 2e

I imagine that there has been a sharp drop in the conception rate among prospective Chinese parents over the past nine months, because we are now at the start of the year of the rat, and I cannot think of an animal that is more reviled, in both Western and Chinese culture. Who would want a child to be born in the year of the rat, the carrier of bubonic plague and other nasty diseases?

So why would the rat be assigned a role in the Chinese zodiac in the first place, given its fully deserved reputation? Well, the Jade Emperor, the ruler of Heaven, challenged all the animals to a race, and the first twelve animals to reach him would be assigned a year in what is a repeating cycle, first codified during the Han Dynasty (206 BC–AD 220), although it had originally been formulated four or five centuries earlier. The sequence would be determined by the order in which the animals finished the race.

Towards the end of the race, the animals had to cross a river, and the rat and the cat teamed up to persuade the kindly ox to carry them across on its back. However, just before the ox reached the far side, the rat pushed the cat into the water and leapt onto the bank, thus becoming the first in the cycle.

The dirty rat!

Incidentally, this folk tale explains why there is no year of the cat, because the cat never made the cut as a result of the rat’s treachery.

I expect the new year celebrations to be somewhat subdued this year. For a start, we won’t be having any firecrackers in our village. Firecrackers have been illegal in Hong Kong since the 1967 riots, which were inspired by the Cultural Revolution then taking place in China. Apparently, activists were taking the gunpowder from firecrackers to make booby-trap bombs. However, despite the illegality, we’ve always had firecrackers at Chinese New Year. The police appear to have turned a blind eye to what might be termed ‘legitimate’ uses. Not this year though! The ongoing unrest in Hong Kong has inspired a crackdown. I have to say that it’s probably just as well that there don’t appear to be any chemists among the ranks of the protesters. As someone who made large quantities of gunpowder as a teenager, I reckon that I could still do so using freely available materials. Naturally, this wouldn’t involve the traditional Chinese formula, which produces a low-grade form of gunpowder, but I’m not about to provide any more information on the subject.

And the firework display in Hong Kong’s harbour has, sadly, been cancelled this year, presumably because of the dire consequences of any unrest breaking out among the large crowds that normally attend. I’m disappointed, because it’s something I look forward to every year. There can’t be many places that produce a better display than Hong Kong. When my cousin stayed with us last year, he told me that he’d been advised: “if you want to see fireworks, go to Disneyland for the fourth of July”. He’d assigned a rating of 95+ out of 100 for the display he saw, but once he’d seen the Hong Kong version, he had to mark the Disney display down to 50/100 in order to give a realistic mark to the display that he watched here.

At least I still have a lion dance to look forward to. Over the years, we’ve had a variety of different lion dances, and I’d been wondering whether I’d see something new this year, or merely a reprise of an already familiar form.

This is a selection of the photos I took today:

Everything starts with the lion costumes being laid out in readiness. And this is the lions waiting to be brought to life:

This is accomplished by dotting the eyes, activating the nose and ears, and carrying out various other procedures with red ink using brushes that are being held in the previous photo by the troupe member on the right. And this is the process in action:

My friend Tom Li once told me that he’d been the front end of a lion in his youth, and that he thought I’d make a good back end. However, as you can see, being the back end requires strength, an attribute that I no longer possess:

The last time I saw a two-lion dance, there appeared to be a confrontational element between the two, but this time there was no interaction:

Incidentally, there is a ‘musical’ accompaniment to the dance—a gong, three pairs of cymbals and a big drum. The ‘band’ can be seen in the background of several photos.

The dance ends with the lions unfurling scrolls with a simple message. It’s difficult to read this one, but it appears to be the salutation lung ma ching san (‘may you have the strength/vitality of a lungma’—a mythical creature that is a cross between a dragon and a horse):

The traditional salutation at this time of year is kung hei fat choi, which is the equivalent of the Western wish that someone will enjoy a prosperous new year and is the inscription on the scroll unrolled by the other lion. However, it’s easier to endure penury if you’re in good health than it is to enjoy prosperity if you’re always sick, so I shall conclude by wishing my readers lung ma ching san.