according to wikipedia: the lantern festival 元宵节 is a chinese festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunar year in the chinese calendar. it is not to be confused with the mid-autumn festival, which is also sometimes known as the "lantern festival" in locations such as singapore, malaysia. during the lantern festival, children go out at night to temples carrying paper lanterns 兔子灯 and solve riddles on the lanterns 猜灯谜. it officially ends the chinese new year. read more here.
kuE' note: this blog post supposed to be posted a week already. but i don't care ler... its better late than nothing or never hor? i updated my twitter anyway :)
ever since i joined my line dance group, my life kinda hectic with other activities too. sometimes i was asked to perform with them in functions or events here. i remembered that my first experience was for a mother & father's day celebration organized by a chinese community. it has been attended by local umno leaders. so i had to do a zapin number and some other line dances to english tunes erm... layan je ler. to tell you the truth, of course i lurve english numbers more especially all those fast tracks.
then there was this function organized by umno people quite some time ago. it was radically damnnnnn delayed i tell you. i stressed out the word damn because it was really late by 2 hours!!! blerk!... pity the kids who followed us. we don't have choice but to stay as we had to do some performances. if you could see my chinese friends, they were all crazy like mad. what to do. anyhow you can view one of my performances that has been recorded by megat here.
so basically my performances last saturday was obviously my third one! it was for a lantern festival celebration held here in kualè. unfortunately i didn't manage to take lotsa pics as usual though as my oly was running out of battery huhuu... now i dunno whether to blame myself for not charging my oly's battery beforehand; or my friend-cum-translator ms tung who didn't explain to me about the function properly. never mind lor... ms tung, no sweat ok?
lesson learned: every night before bedtime, i will ensure that i fully charged my oly's battery before the next day turned up, no matter whether i have anything going on or not! ;)
the function started with everyone singing the national song; as soon as the guest of honour, minister in the prime minister's department datuk seri mohamed nazri abdul aziz arrived.
there were variety of music and drums and of course the chinese lion dances and firecrackers.
children carry their lanterns around the village and families come together to eat sweet rice balls for good fortune and family unity. chinese lanterns were traditionally made of silk, paper and even glass. although the most common is the typical red balloon lantern, nowadays chinese Lanterns come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors. there are lanterns in shapes of boxes, lotus flowers, dragons, butterflies and all sorts of animals. they range from the small lanterns carried by hand made of paper by school children to gigantic floats shaped in the chinese zodiac animal for that year made by teams of craftsmen. lion dances came to the main stage then along with these group of people. i knew that they have some kind stories and meaning behind the lion dance performances.
kuE' note: this blog post supposed to be posted a week already. but i don't care ler... its better late than nothing or never hor? i updated my twitter anyway :)
ever since i joined my line dance group, my life kinda hectic with other activities too. sometimes i was asked to perform with them in functions or events here. i remembered that my first experience was for a mother & father's day celebration organized by a chinese community. it has been attended by local umno leaders. so i had to do a zapin number and some other line dances to english tunes erm... layan je ler. to tell you the truth, of course i lurve english numbers more especially all those fast tracks.
then there was this function organized by umno people quite some time ago. it was radically damnnnnn delayed i tell you. i stressed out the word damn because it was really late by 2 hours!!! blerk!... pity the kids who followed us. we don't have choice but to stay as we had to do some performances. if you could see my chinese friends, they were all crazy like mad. what to do. anyhow you can view one of my performances that has been recorded by megat here.
so basically my performances last saturday was obviously my third one! it was for a lantern festival celebration held here in kualè. unfortunately i didn't manage to take lotsa pics as usual though as my oly was running out of battery huhuu... now i dunno whether to blame myself for not charging my oly's battery beforehand; or my friend-cum-translator ms tung who didn't explain to me about the function properly. never mind lor... ms tung, no sweat ok?
lesson learned: every night before bedtime, i will ensure that i fully charged my oly's battery before the next day turned up, no matter whether i have anything going on or not! ;)
the function started with everyone singing the national song; as soon as the guest of honour, minister in the prime minister's department datuk seri mohamed nazri abdul aziz arrived.
there were variety of music and drums and of course the chinese lion dances and firecrackers.
children carry their lanterns around the village and families come together to eat sweet rice balls for good fortune and family unity. chinese lanterns were traditionally made of silk, paper and even glass. although the most common is the typical red balloon lantern, nowadays chinese Lanterns come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors. there are lanterns in shapes of boxes, lotus flowers, dragons, butterflies and all sorts of animals. they range from the small lanterns carried by hand made of paper by school children to gigantic floats shaped in the chinese zodiac animal for that year made by teams of craftsmen. lion dances came to the main stage then along with these group of people. i knew that they have some kind stories and meaning behind the lion dance performances.
towards the end of the performance, both "the lions" tried to peel out the mandarin oranges skin. they then presented the oranges to datuk nazri, who is also the mp of padang rengas.
i tell you what people. i could say that the function that night was really celebrated with 1malaysia spirit although it was meant for a chinese festivity. there were dance performances of all sorts of cultures like malay, chinese and indian, not forgetting shuffle dance by kualè youth itself.
my performance was the first one. i didn't get to ask anyone to capture a video of it though. none of our kids followed anyway as the function was at night, and we afraid that it would be dragged till late. i should have asked bebudak shuffle tu to record a video of mine kan kan... :)
my performance was the first one. i didn't get to ask anyone to capture a video of it though. none of our kids followed anyway as the function was at night, and we afraid that it would be dragged till late. i should have asked bebudak shuffle tu to record a video of mine kan kan... :)
the function wrapped up with lucky draws. looks like people were already looking forward with it from the beginning, as prizes offered were not bad i.e. hampers, bicycles, electrical items like blender, stand fans, and tvs too! but we didn't wait till the function ended though, as we knew it that there must be jammed if everyone were to go back together. from what i understood, since the function happened to be during syawal, datuk nazri also gave away raya money packets to all children who came that night.
and before i sign off this blog post, i am so glad to present you part of the performances held during that night... enjoy!
and before i sign off this blog post, i am so glad to present you part of the performances held during that night... enjoy!
lantern festival celebration from kuE on vimeo
so how's the lantern festival at your places celebrated. care to share them with me?
see... when i blog, i really blog away *phew*
see... when i blog, i really blog away *phew*
- coming up: more delayed blog post and sponsored blog post.
- coming up as well: the most bloggers' events talk of the blogosphere! can you guess of what is it? tungguuuuuuuuu... (wait) *winks*
- besides that, i am also waiting for ms tung to pass me a china press newspaper cut-out about the function. they actually have a pic of me there you know. i wonder whether any of you people realized it ;)
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