The Spirit of Tradition Roars Like a Lion : Hooked by watching dancers perform in China after World War II, Jeff Chan came back to the West Coast and started his own group. The choreography of sounds, rhythms, dance and martial arts moves has kept him young for three decades.
We are called the Immortals Gung Fu Lion Dancers. It started here in L.A. when I used to perform with about 10 others in the Chinese New Year parade. A lot of kids wanted to follow me around, so I began to teach them the drums, gongs and cymbals and the martial arts, because all our moves are martial arts moves.
Now we have about a hundred people in the group, including several generations of families. Our youngest member is 9 and our oldest is 65. Our members are from all over: Thousand Oaks, Monterey Park, Lincoln Heights, South Pasadena, Orange County.
I first saw this type of dancing in China. I was born in Oakland, but right after World War II, around 1945, a lot of Chinese families (in the United States) were sending their kids over there to see the other side of the culture. My father sent me and my brother to stay for a few years with my uncle, who was a rice farmer in Canton. I was a pre-teen at the time.
Lion dancing is a very popular art form in China. The dancers come out on the new year and go from one village to another and perform their lion dancing as a martial art. It brings good luck and prosperity, and those are the highest thing on most Chinese people’s lists. There isn’t much to do out on those rice farms, and I watched those lion dancers and got hooked. I just followed them around. And I began studying martial arts.
When the Communists took over in 1949, we had to come home. But I couldn’t forget that dancing. My brother and I brought home one of the ceremonial lions they use in the dance. It’s made of papier-mache, bamboo and silk. My first performance in the lion dancing was in 1949 when we formed a troupe in Alameda.
That lasted until I went into the service in 1954 and I was posted to Southern California. One of the guys serving with me was going to Hong Kong to get married, so I asked him to send me a lion from there. I got the lions from there for years, but now a lot of the old craftsmen are gone and younger people are not carrying on the art of making them. So we get them from mainland China, but the quality isn’t as good.
I stayed in Southern California while I was in the service, got married and had two kids. For 33 years, I’ve been a draftsman at Caltrans, helping design highways during the week. I’m looking forward to retirement soon, but not from the lion dancing. I’ll keep doing that. I started a troupe here in the early 1960s and it has kept on going. Some of the founding members are still in it.
We are very busy. The Chinese New Year runs for a month, all of February. And for that month we are out dancing every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We dance at schools, weddings, restaurants, mostly in Los Angeles. We have gone to Las Vegas a few times. The other months, we dance about once a week, like for grand openings of businesses, things like that.
About 50 of us danced in the New Year’s parade in Alhambra on Feb. 4, but we will have about 100 at the big one in Chinatown. It’s a big headache to use everyone! We will use four ceremonial lions. Each one is 15 feet long with many bright colors. Plus, we play all our own drums, cymbals and gongs. And we will do martial arts demonstrations too.
It’s tough to learn all the stuff you need to know for this type of dancing. I require new people to have some background in martial arts. Then I teach them the drums, gongs and cymbals. It takes several months. New people must really want to learn, not just hang around with us.
It takes a lot of strength, agility and endurance. I don’t know how I keep doing it! My wrists and elbows hurt a little sometimes from all the banging on the drums. But you’re only as young as you feel! I just got hooked, I guess. I couldn’t get away. I just love all parts of it. The drumming gets me too.
When you do a show right, you can see how the audience appreciates it. The old-timers, the moment they hear the drumming, it brings back memories of childhood. It can be memories of food, family, good times. You can see in their faces the good memories.
It makes my life more complete than anything else. We have a lot of friends. The troupe members do things together. It’s a full life. Life is not boring. I feel young. How can I act my age? It’s not me.