Lunar New Year performers, instructors and hosts gather to take pictures for their audience after the lion dance. Photo by Dajonea Robinson.

Humboldt State celebrates the Lunar New Year

Translate
“The longer the night lasts, the more our dreams will be.” – Chinese Proverb

This year’s Lunar New Year Festival landed on Feb. 16 and is also the year of the dog. The new year is determined by the first new moon between Jan. 21 to Feb. 20.

The celebration is a time to welcome in the new year with family, as well as giving luck out and taking it in. Some of the festivities include ceremonies, lion and dragon dances, fireworks and more.

Video recorded by Dajonea Robinson. Edited by Surya Gopalan.

Allan Hubbard, martial arts instructor for Eastern Ways Martial Arts, and his team made the six-hour drive from Sacramento to perform the traditional lion dance for the Lunar New Year event on Feb. 16.

“The significance of the lion dance is normally the kickoff to any event during the Lunar New Year to bring good luck, prosperity and good health for the new year,” Hubbard said.

Hubbard said in a typical performance, the audience should expect the lions to be very animated as they move throughout the crowd.

“There’s a segment of the routine where the lions will play and then take nap. They’ll wake back up, scratch and stretch and then they eat lettuce. They then perform three bows, which are the humility of the lion to the crowd,” Hubbard said.

Jacob Langley was one of the performers in the lion dance routine. Langley has been lion-dancing for five to six years and has been training for kung fu for 16 years.

“I’ve always loved it here, [and] I’ve been a few times. We had some other teams that were going in to perform at casinos and we figured this would be the better one to come to,” Langley said. “It’s just always fun to travel and do lion-dancing anywhere we can go. I had a great time, the audience was a blast and we had a really successful dance.”

Aaron Gardener is one of the instructors for Eastern Ways Martial Arts and he was also part of the lion-dancing team.

“Every year around Chinese New Year we do a lot these lion dances,” Gardener said. “It’s always a lot of fun. I like entertaining people and making them laugh.”

Gardener has been training for lion-dancing for about four years and has been training for kung fu for about eight years.

“At our school, everybody does the martial art aspect first,” Gardener said. “Once they get down the basic stances and skills balance, then we allow people to be lion-dancers.”

Gung hay fat choy (happy new year)!

Share This Post

Share on facebook
Share on twitter
Share on email
Share on reddit

More Stories

John Craigie merges folk with humor at the Van Duzer Theatre

by Brad Butterfield John Craigie blended comedic anecdotes with folk music, creating a one-of-a-kind show on March 1 at the Van Duzer Theatre. Describing himself as ‘the love child of John Prine and Mitch Hedberg with a vagabond troubadour edge,’

Women’s volleyball club is being formed at Cal Poly Humboldt

by Jake Knoeller and Dezmond Remington For the first time, a women’s club volleyball team is being formed at Cal Poly Humboldt. The idea was brought up when a large number of women were consistently attending the men’s practices, including

Authors’ Celebration brings writers together

by Dezmond Remington Writers are famously loners, depicted in media as squirreled away in some dark cabin deep in the woods or confined to a cockroach-infested apartment. At the bare minimum, they’re often regarded as imprisoned in their own minds,

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply