Moonlit Wanderer: Dragon: A Chinese New Year Story

Dragons were initially introduced to me as cartoonish, 2D beings. It was showcased as one in Disney’s Pete’s Dragon, the pages filled with knights, folklore and limericks from my old Young Children’s Encyclopedia, plus countless oriental dragons from Chinese new year-themed cartoons on TV.

Then, dragons became a diverse concept. It became a symbol of bravery and greatness, like the Double Dragon game; the first RPG game that I played as a kid, when IBM’s a dominant brand, computers were mouse-less, and the screen’s colours were limited to two. Dragons were also propagated as best of friends, like Falkor from Neverending Story, and Mushu in Disney’s Mulan about a decade later. Dragons were also wish-granters in Dragonball; a series of illustrated comic books where the actual dragon only appeared less than 1% of the whole narration.

Dragon became more evident as part of the Chinese zodiac when I was an extreme fan of Bruce Lee in 1994. Born in the year of the Dragon (in 1940), he was so inspiring and influential that I bought and read through his posthumously-published Tao of Jeet Kune Do, and kept it like a cherished diary.

Irtiza saw his first dragon called Kilgharrah from Merlin: the TV series (though he originally pointed at the TV screen and said “Dinosaur!”). Then he watched his first close-up Chinese lion dance performance at Giant KD earlier this year. Again he pointed at a ball-chasing dragon (It was actually a water dragon) and said “Itu ular ke?”. But his initial meeting with the dragon was met with unexpected incident…a lion ‘mauled’ Irtiza for almost 30 seconds (which duration was by far the longest from all the bystanders who got ‘bitten’ by the lion by only 10 seconds tops). Later I got to know that it was a Chinese belief that when a lion touches you during the performance, it’ll bring you prosperity or something. As for Irtiza, his first real encounter with the dragon ended with him developing a phobia for Chinese lions.

The event that started the phobia

About a week ago, the Palm Spring Management held a lion dance performance in front of the management building. It was 630pm, and the three of us were able to hear the sound of the Chinese drums getting louder as the team were travelling from the main entrance, passing our unit, and went straight to the event venue. As wifey was preparing herself for the night, Irtiza and I went out to see the performance.

Irtiza was originally excited to see the preparations done before the actual lion dance performance. But when he saw not one or two, but four lions in view, he got scared. For the first time I felt him tremble. I truly wanted him to overcome him fear and coax him to continue watching the performance. I was really hoping that he won’t adopt this unnecessary phobia, like what I had with clowns, the deep sea, and dogs (Thanks to 80s horror/thriller movies).

Throughout the show, he looked worried. He kept putting his finger in his mouth while cautiously watching the show. I tried to casually describe the event while laughing when the lions were funny and playful in front of the audience. The main attraction of the show, the dragon, was unfortunately immobile and parked at the side of the building throughout the performance.

Some lions were walking around at this time

The performers preparing the drums and props for the performance

A terrified Irtiza

Fingers in mouth during the performance

The performance and Irtiza's reaction

We left the show early, as Maghrib time was close. There was a sign of relief on his face when we walked back home. It seems that the next dragon that he’ll see in the near future would be the one from Merlin. Hopefully, in a year’s time, he’ll forget his phobia and enjoy the lion dance like I did.