Tony Fan adjusts his lion dance costume at the Brewer Arena. Fan and other members of Success Lion Dance Troupe will be performing at Chinese New Year celebrations across Ottawa.
Despite a bitterly cold January that made finding volunteers a challenge, a pride of colourfully decorated lions will be parading through Chinatown on Sunday in celebration of Chinese New Year, say organizers.
The dance troupe will be passing under Chinatown’s Royal Arch. This will be the first Chinese New Year celebration since the unveiling of the arch back in October 2010.
January’s string of cold days made it hard for Tony Fan, the leader of Ottawa’s Success Lion Dance Troupe, to find volunteers, he said in the days leading up to the Feb. 6 event.
“It’s so cold, I’m having a hard time trying to get people out,” says Fan.
“When I ask people, they all hesitate.”
His troupe is experienced enough that they don’t need to practice, but they’re hesitant to commit to the event because of the recent weather, explains Fan.
The 3,000-year-old lion dance started after a creature terrorized ancient Chinese villages with thunder, lightning and rain. The creature’s attacks, however, resulted in a bountiful harvest, leading the villagers to prosperity. Ever since, the Chinese have been doing the lion dance at traditional festivals.
The lions will be going from business to business to bring prosperity, luck and happiness, and ward off evil spirits.
The dance routines usually include various martial arts movements and thundering drums, cymbals and gongs.
This year, Fan hopes to do things a little differently, and get his entire dance troupe to wear rabbit masks in honour of the Year of the Rabbit.
Chinatown celebrations have been criticized by those in the community for not being festive enough or eventful enough in the past. But businesses in Chinatown are still looking forward to the lion dance, says Dennis Luc, a board member on Chinatown’s BIA and owner of Mekong Restaurant.
Luc admits the Ottawa event doesn’t draw out a lot of people like the festivities in Vancouver and Toronto.
“Vancouver and Toronto have really big Chinese communities. In Toronto, all the Chinese malls are already packed right now because of Chinese New Year's,” says Luc.
According to the 2006 census, there are 402,000 Chinese Canadians living in Vancouver, 280,000 in Toronto, while Ottawa has about 35,000.
Regardless, Luc says the celebration is still a lot of fun for the businesses in the area. “We just like to see something happening for Chinese New Year,” says Luc.
Luc and his restaurant employees will be feeding lettuce to the lions outside their restaurant. It is tradition for businesses to put some sort of vegetable outside, tied to a red envelope that contains money, as a reward for the dance troupe.
Even though Chinese New Year is officially on Feb. 3, Ottawa Chinatown’s Lunar New Year Celebration will take place on Sunday from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. The lion dance will take place on Somerset Street West between Bay Street and Preston Street.