Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Gong Xi Fa Cai

I'm not exactly sure what "Gong Xi Fa Cai" means but I know it has something to do with the Chinese New Year. I think it roughly means "congratulations and be prosperous."

As promised, here are some photos of decorations for Chinese New Year that I took around Singapore. I am trying something new - a slideshow. You should be able to see it automatically playing below with captions. Let me know if it's not working.



Below you'll find a 2-minute video of a lion dance that was probably about 20 minutes altogether. I would have taped more (it got more interesting) but, unfortunately, my batteries died. I enjoyed watching the lion dance and am impressed with the skill of the dancers. Later on (after my batteries died) there was a second lion that joined the dance. Pretty neat how they can stay synchronized while not able to see the other dancers is impressive. And my sympathy is with those poor fellows dancing as the tails of the lions, just seeing the rear end of the guy dancing as the head. [I know my grammar's off. Sorry.]

Enjoy the video and watch for the lion blinking his eyes. For some reason I especially liked that aspect. (And, by the way, at no point in the video do you hear me talking so... that lady talking loudly is not me.) The drums are really loud so you may want to turn down your volume first. Quoting from wikipedia: "It is believed that the loud beats of the drum and the deafening sounds of the cymbals together with the face of the dragon or lion dancing aggressively can evict bad or evil spirits."


I hope you've enjoyed your "taste" of Chinese New Year!
Posted by Starlene at 12:14 AM
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4 comments:

  1. Hen JenJanuary 28, 2009 at 3:10 PM

    what a great post! I love, love, love all the red lanterns everywhere! The Chinese New Year looks very exciting. When we went to Taiwan, we got there on the tale end of New Year and we missed most of the excitement, now I am thinking we really missed something worth being there for!

    You look lovely with the family at Mortons! :)

    The lion dance was really good, they must be very skilled.

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  2. StarleneJanuary 29, 2009 at 1:04 AM

    Ah, gee! (blushing!) I'm glad you enjoyed it. I bet the decorations and festivities in Taiwan would have been amazing, too. I didn't realize until recently that the Chinese New Year is actually a 15 day event (I think). Bummer we don't get all 15 of those days as public holidays. I should be happy with the 2 days, I guess. And the girls were lucky enough to get the whole week.

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  3. Liew Shi XiongFebruary 19, 2009 at 5:45 PM

    Gong Xi Fa Cai

    Gong Xi means "congratulations"
    Fa Cai means "grow in wealth"

    So on Chinese New Year, we congratulate each other to grow prosperous :)

    Glad you're liking here in Singapore. Hope everything in this island has been good for you too.

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  4. StarleneFebruary 21, 2009 at 11:40 PM

    Xiong- How nice to have you stop by and leave a comment. Thanks for taking the time to define Gong Xi Fa Cai. Now I will know for the future. Next step for me will be learning to pronounce it. Then again, that may never happen, as I don't think I'll ever be able to pronounce anything in Chinese correctly.

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