Dancing dragons

Every year Christchurch City Council along with the Asian NZ Foundation organise a Chinese Lantern festival. It started in 2006, I think, so last weekend was the fourth annual running. I think it started originally as a sort of celebration of the Chinese New Year and Chinese culture with a few lanterns down by the Avon in Victoria Park but has grown into a whole cultural experience. As well as the lanterns, some of which are pretty amazing really, there are Asian food stalls and Chinese entertainment, such as dancing, music, singing and traditional puppet and face-changing acts. I think the highlight for me was probably the face-changing thing or maybe the face-changing puppets. That was an impressive combination.

The lanterns were really quite impressive too. I'm not quite sure what I expected but maybe the traditional type lanterns. You know, the sort of pop-out corrogated paper ones, with a candle inside. In the end, they were really amazingly detailed, as you can see from the photos. Well worth a wander round to have a gander. It was pretty busy though. Some of the biggest crowds I've seen in Christchurch.



Another totally original act, the like of which I've never seen, involved this elaborate crane-like contraption and a whole load of ropes, and dancing orange dragons. Hopefully you the video will give you a bit of a taste of what the show involved. I still cannot figure out how they turned the dragons round to make them go back to their house. And I'd hate to imagine the hassle it would be sorting out all the ropes if they got tangled.

This weekend has been quite a social weekend. On Friday night we had those involved with the Exploring Discipleship course over to ours for a bit of a debrief about how the course went last term and how we might tweak it going forward. Then yesterday we had a pot-luck lunch over here for Joanne's indoor netball team and their other halves, while today, after church, Tim & Christine had us and a few others over to their new place for a barbecue to thank us for helping them move back in December.