Skip to main content

Dragon's Head

R1230719L  (Camera: Ricoh GX200)

As the Chinese New Year is approaching, of which this time the new year day falls on 3 February, chances are that you will see some lion dances.  With a bit of luck, you may even see dragon dances!

There is a vivid depiction of a dragon dance by Martin Booth in his memoir Gweilo, which is about his childhood in Hong Kong:

Gweilo: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood"Finally, to the clashing of cymbals and striking of hand gongs... stilt-walkers and jugglers followed the lion, there was a gap and then the dragon arrived on the scene.  It was magnificent.  Its head was at least nine feet high, excluding the  horns on top.  Its mouth -- red-mawed and lined with white teeth -- was big enough for me to have sat in.  The mouth was operated by a man walking in front of the dragon with a pole connected to the dragon's lower lip, whilst the remainder of the head was held high by one man.  As with the lion, he swung it to and fro, lowered it to the ground then looked at the sky, in time to the percussion instruments.  Several yards in front of the dragon pranced a man with a paper fish almost as big as himself on the pole, with which he teased the beast.

"Behind the head was a one-hundred-year-long reptilian body constructed of coloured cloth painted ins cales and stretched over a series of bamboo hoops.  Under this danced several dozen men, only their legs showing and giving the dragon's body the appearance of a multi-coloured circus centipede.  The body curled in on itself, twisting across the road and generally behaving in a serpentine fashion...."


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Real Hero

(Grip On Reality: This photo was taken on my way to work.  I was walking past trucks parking on a cul-de-sac when the ropes caught my attention.  The light was right, the colour was right and the criss-crossing pattern was perfect and I held up my GX200.  People passing by checked me out and wondered what could be made out of such a boring scene.  To me, the fun in photography is that the photographer makes something interesting out of what is not obvious to most at the scene.  The ropes tied in knots somehow reminded people I know who are in the grip of the recession) You must have also known a friend or two, or even yourself, being baffled by the spiral downturn of the economy.   Bank went bankrupt and the rich was faced with a shrinking wealth.  A friend of mine has just had his salary cut by over 10% and some of his colleagues started to be shed. But, wait. Was this done really for the sake of continuing the business? Or is there a factor or greed in it?  I wonder whether the

New Low Prices

The window shopping some hours ago has almost provoked my AgIDS illness.  Just in case you’re in Hong Kong or are coming here, and have the money to burn (All in HK$/ body only): GX200 = $3,280 GRD2 = $3,380 LX3 = $3,180 G10 = $3,280 Prices are available form a gear shop on the 1st floor of the Mongkok Computer Centre.   Besides these new low prices, I found that Wing Shing Photo (55-57Sai Yeung Choi St., MK Tel: 2396 6886/ 91-95 Fa Yuen St., MK  Tel: 2396 6885) is offering a Sony A700 + Carl Zeiss Lens package for HK$9,980 (hopefully, a bargain will make it some hundreds cheaper).

Eye Contact

(Leica D-lux 5) The digital era may make it easier to end up with fave shots. Even lousy photos may be turned likable after a few clicks in the post-processing workflow. But if digital advancement or amendments have any bearing on the cultivation of personal style, no photographers will need to discover his or her own photographer’s eye. Undoutedly, this is out of the question. Only with a trained photographer’s eye can we give a thinking gaze and capture an eternal moment, in our unique style. Style is the soul of a great photo. A few posts have been written in GXG to touch on the topic of photographer’s eye. Instead of finding an answer, which would require academic discussions, the posts are intended to give my general reflections and spark interests in moving towards further exploration of the topic.  The posts can be viewed after the links: 1) Photographer's Eye: Storytelling 2) Photographer's Eye: Little Show of Observing 3) Photographer's Eye: Sight-Worthy 4