{"id":897,"date":"2012-03-21T22:30:57","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T02:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.junru.me\/?p=897"},"modified":"2012-03-21T22:44:36","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T02:44:36","slug":"lion-ladies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.junru.me\/?p=897","title":{"rendered":"Lion Ladies \u2013 three generations of Chinese American women and a lion dancing club"},"content":{"rendered":"

Below is the cover story of my Magazine<\/a> Project.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cTam-Tam,\u201d \u201cTong-Tong,\u201d noises of chau gongs and drums echo for blocks during the finale of the annual sChinese New Year\u2019s parade. Thirteen colorful lions move up and down among the crowds on Mott Street, one of the oldest streets in New York\u2019s Chinatown. A bright red lion dances in the center, shaking its head and flicking its tail with energetic movements, the shinning outfit shimmering in the afternoon sun. A brown pair of women\u2019s UGG boots jumps in and out under the delicate fabric of the lion\u2019s tail. The girl who wears them is 17-year-old Kristin Tom-Lew.<\/p>\n

Kristin\u2019s grandmother, Valerie Tom is currently the executive director of the Chinatown Community Young Lions, a lion-dancing club for youth ranging in age from six to 17. She founded the club in 1972 because her son, Brian, wanted to learn the dance but had a hard time getting into any of the lion dance clubs in Chinatown. Back then, all the lion dance clubs were made up of Chinese who were born in China. These organizations separated themselves from Chinese Americans who were born in the United States. \u201cBrian was not born on the other side. He\u2019s American and they didn\u2019t recognize him,\u201d says Valerie.<\/p>\n

As a result, Valerie and her ex-husband bought a lion head and other lion dance equipment for Brian and five of his friends. They created a non-profit organization for any young people who wanted to learn traditional Chinese lion dance. Nine-year-old Brian was the first teacher in the club. He learned the lion dance from watching other lion dancers in Chinatown.<\/p>\n

When Valerie founded the club, her daughter Kathleen was seven years old, and became interested in lion dance. At that time, no girls in Chinatown performed on any of the teams. Kathleen joined the club and began to learn to drum from her brothers and their friends. She also did the lion head dance when needed. \u201cI don\u2019t know why females were not into the lion dance back then. I\u2019m not sure what people thought. I wasn\u2019t interested in what people thought, we were just doing it for fun,\u201d says Kathleen, who became the first female drummer on a lion dancing team in New York\u2019s Chinatown.<\/p>\n

The club started out with just six members. There are now approximately 250 to 300 active members, among which there are 25 to 30 girls. In the 40 years since Valerie founded the club, over 3,000 kids have come through the program. Besides the major parades during Halloween and the Chinese New Year, the club is also hired throughout the year for a variety of events including restaurant functions, weddings and birthday parties. The lion dance is more than a tradition\u2014 it\u2019s also a religious ceremony in which the dancers act as guardians and harbingers of good luck to come. The team danced in a grand mall in Flushing, Queens when it was opened\u2014 lions went around the whole mall, giving blessings to all the stores.<\/p>\n

All of Valerie\u2019s children and grandchildren are involved in the club. Valerie\u2019s granddaughters, Kristin and Katelyn, both play important roles on the team. Kristin is a great lion head dancer and everybody celebrates Katelyn\u2019s outstanding drumming skills.<\/p>\n

Kristin\u2019s earliest memory from lion dance was when she was two years old. \u201cI was sitting on the wagon and people pushed us around in Chinatown during the New Year Parade,\u201d says Kristin. She started learning the lion dance at three years old, when her grandmother and her mother bought a little lion head for her to play with. The lion dance helps keep the family close across generations.<\/p>\n

Kristin is one of the best female lion dancers in the group. She dances just as effortlessly with the heavy lion\u2019s head as any male dancer. Kristin is talented at sports and is the captain of her high school basketball team. She is also a star player on the New York Rokits Girls Basketball Team, a basketball team for girls under 18 in Chinatown.<\/p>\n

For Kristin, the biggest challenge in lion dance is drumming where \u201cthere\u2019s an up beat, a low beat, three balances\u2014 and it has to be really smooth.\u201d Her sister Katelyn seems to have an innate sense of rhythm and is a talented drummer. Dancing with the heavy lion\u2019s head is more of a challenge for Katelyn. At the very end of the New Year\u2019s parade finale, Kristin lifted Katelyn up on her shoulders as she held the lion head for a cheering audience.<\/p>\n

Kristin and Katelyn are fifth generation immigrants. Their great-grandfather came from Toishan, Guangdong, China to New York in the late 1800s. The entire family has resided in New York\u2019s Chinatown for over 100 years.<\/p>\n

When Valerie was born over sixty years ago, Chinatown in New York was only six to seven blocks. It now spans almost 40 blocks, and the population is 25 times larger. Limited space has caused many of the second and third generations of Chinese to move to other places such as Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey. But Valerie and her family have no desire to leave. \u201cIt\u2019s so convenient to live in Chinatown and we all love Chinatown. It\u2019s home,\u201d says Kathleen.<\/p>\n

Though Chinatown has expanded since Valerie\u2019s childhood, she feels that her granddaughters\u2019 lives are not as different from her own as one might expect. On weekdays they go to Chinese language school after American school. On Fridays, they go to Girl Scout meetings. They go with their family to church on Sundays.<\/p>\n

Valerie, Kathleen, Kristin and Katelyn all call themselves \u201cABCs,\u201d short for \u201cAmerican Born Chinese,\u201d which is a term Chinese Americans use to differentiate themselves from Chinese who are born in China. To them, Chinese Americans are different from either Chinese or Americans since they follow both Chinese traditions and American values.<\/p>\n

The family still practices many Chinese traditions. Along with the lion dance, they also like eating noodles on birthdays to represent a long life. They still keep the tradition of wearing red for good luck to celebrate the New Year.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Chinese New Year\u2019s Eve, we worship our ancestors by lighting a candle and incense as well as serving chicken and the suji\u2013 all the traditional Chinese dishes for the ancestors. The only difference is, as American born, we don\u2019t usually cook Chinese food. It\u2019s easier for us to buy them cooked,\u201d laughs Valerie.<\/p>\n

Valerie\u2019s ex-husband was a Scottish man who she met in high school. They had four children together. \u201cI think women can do anything that men can do, and better,\u201d says Valerie, \u201cbecause we have children and we are forced to multi-task\u2014 we have to both work and take care of the family. A man has a tough time doing all of that. He goes to work and comes back and he\u2019s tired. A woman\u2019s job continues.\u201d Though all of her daughters married Chinese Americans, Valerie says she would not mind if her daughters and granddaughters date men from other ethnic groups. Her daughter, Kathleen, still prefers her daughters Kristin and Katelyn to date and marry Asians. \u201cI don\u2019t know why, I just prefer them to stay with Asians,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Kathleen is an elementary school teacher in Queens. She is the strong woman that her mother raised her to be, with both a career and a family.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want my daughters to be strong, independent women, so that they can stand on their own and don\u2019t have to depend on anybody,\u201d says Kathleen.<\/p>\n

After the last dance, lions walk on by one into the club at 19 Mott St. to the loud cheering and music, marking the end of the annual show. Dancers take off the costumes and go to a Chinese restaurant, where Valerie orders two big tables of food as celebration. Teenagers laugh and joke around with each other as families and relatives chat about life at this annual reunion. When the night comes, the banquet is over. People say goodbye to each other, pack up the costumes and walk home down the dark streets of Chinatown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Below is the cover story of my Magazine Project. \u201cTam-Tam,\u201d \u201cTong-Tong,\u201d noises of chau gongs and drums echo for blocks during the finale of the annual sChinese New Year\u2019s parade. Thirteen colorful lions move up and down among the crowds on Mott Street, one of the oldest streets in New York\u2019s Chinatown. A bright red Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.junru.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.junru.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.junru.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.junru.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.junru.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=897"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.junru.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":906,"href":"http:\/\/www.junru.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897\/revisions\/906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.junru.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.junru.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.junru.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}