The traditional Chinese drumming stops and lettuce sprays from the mouth of a life-sized, red paper mache lion over a couple in a backyard in San Luis Obispo on their wedding day.
The newlyweds, Jennifer and Simon, smile and laugh while the wedding attendees cheer.
When the band begins drumming again, Ichigo, the red lion, jumps and stomps, moving forward and back, all the while blinking and flicking his ears. The person controlling his tail under the sequined cloth that is his body lifts their partner with Ichigo’s head onto their shoulders to present a red scroll wishing a happy, long marriage to the couple in Chinese script. Ichigo finishes with three bows.
This is Ichigo’s way of blessing the couple and wishing them happiness.
Ichigo is one of the lions used by the Cal Poly Lion Dance Team, the only lion dance team on the Central Coast. The team performs these sorts of traditional Chinese blessings throughout the San Luis Obispo community, bringing blessings of success and good fortune to restaurants, businesses and weddings.
As the Lunar New Year approaches in February, the Lion Dance Team is gearing up for their busiest time of the year. They have several performances throughout the month including the Chinese Student Association Lunar New Year Banquet on Feb. 3 and blessing multiple businesses throughout the Central Coast.
This year the Cal Poly Lion Dance Team is hoping to return to their roots by emphasizing blessings over community outreach performances, based on a decision made by captains Audrey Tran and Kenneth Wong.
Tran and Wong are able to make this decision because the Cal Poly Lion Dance Team is entirely student run and has been since it was started in 1957 by Wong Luis Young.
“Something unique about here at Cal Poly is that people graduate and they don’t really come back to teach us. We have to teach each other and there’s a new group of people every year teaching it,” Wong said.
Traditionally, lion dance’s long history and culture is passed down from master to student, but at Cal Poly the students pass off their knowledge of the lion dance to the incoming generation of dancers and rely on storytelling to keep the culture alive.
According to the Cal Poly Lion Dance Team page, the tradition of the lion dance dates back to ancient China. As the story goes, a great beast called the “Nian” would attack the villages of China every year and destroy their crops. Tired of their livelihoods constantly being destroyed, the villagers came up with a decorative lion costume and elaborate movements to scare the Nian away. The dance is performed every year on the Lunar New Year to bring the community happiness, success and good fortune.
Though sometimes confused for dragon dance, the lion dance is distinctly different. While the lion dance is performed by two dancers who incorporate martial arts into their movements, the dragon dance is on a set of poles operated by several performers and the dance is traditionally seen as a symbol for wisdom, power and auspiciousness, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art. Both dances are commonly performed during Lunar New Year.
The Cal Poly Lion Dance team has two types of performances that they do: traditional blessings throughout the community and skits done for entertainment.
“We need both to function, not as just like the team, but kind of like an organization as well because if you don’t perform for audiences then no one is going to know but if you don’t perform for businesses you’re not really, I don’t want to say performing your duty to your culture, but like that’s kind of how I see it,” Tran said.
The traditional blessings, which the team is trying to do more of, include specific cultural movements and follows the same general pattern every time.
The ritual begins with the lion bowing three times to show respect before dancing around and performing acrobatic tricks. The lion grows hungry and searches for food, which is usually lettuce or tangerines presented to the lion dangling on a string. After the lion eats, it spits the food back out to the audience as a blessing and a way to spread the wealth, spraying shredded lettuce and tangerine quarters everywhere. Once the blessing is complete, the lion bows three times again and falls asleep.
Their other type of performance, skits, allows the team to get more creative while still including those cultural moves.
Members of the team, such as biomedical engineering sophomore Darin Gong, get to write their own skits for the group. These skits often include more complicated acrobatic tricks, including rolls, lifts and jumps, and a fun storyline. One of their most complicated tricks, the orbital, involves the tail spinning the head around by their waist.
“It’s storytelling with doing the crazy moves you see people do,” Gong said. “I think it’s a really cool blend of the art plus tradition together.”
Through these performances, the Cal Poly Lion Dance team shares Chinese culture with the Central Coast.
Gong has been using these performances with the team to share his culture since he was about 5 -years-old.
His parents wanted him and his brother to be a part of something connected to their Chinese culture and to learn more about their heritage.
“Having Cal Poly Lion Dance here really helped me understand my own culture, my background,” Gong said.
While Wong said he appreciates being able to share Asian culture with the community, especially in SLO where the population is predominantly white, keeping the traditions alive is important to him.
“I try my best to highlight the traditional aspect of lion dance. I don’t want to lose any of that, especially when there’s not a master here to share those traditions down,” Wong said.
According to Tran, a lot of practice and hard work goes into preparing for these performances.
The team practices together for two hours twice a week, and sometimes more when they have a big performance. Spending so much time together, the team grows quite close.
Teammates Luis and Try-An develop a bond through the time they spend together preforming as one lion. Emily Schiffenhaus | Mustang News 
Students like Darin that have been on the team longer teach the newer members like Wilson the history and movements of the lion dance. Emily Schiffenhaus | Mustang News 
Sylvia and Matthew share their exhaustion after a run through at practice. Emily Schiffenhaus | Mustang News
“I definitely feel that lion dance has kind of become a safe, home away from home kind of experience,” Tran said.
At the end of every rehearsal, the team gathers in a circle and everyone puts a hand in the middle for the classic “team on three” closing. At the release, the team exclaims “Lion Dance Team,” forming a heart with their arms and the person next to them on the word team.
Business junior Alan Servin, who usually plays a tail of the lion, said these connections between teammates are really important.
“You have to be close with the head you’re going to be with most of the time because you have to trust each other,” he said. “They have to trust that you’re not going to drop them.”
Trust is especially important once the costumes are on.
“You have no vision in the lion head,” Director of Wing Wai Australia Willis Koh said. Performers rely on the opening of the mouth to be able to see out.
Wing Wai Australia, a company based in Australia with manufacturers in Hong Kong and China, is where the team currently gets their lion costumes from. The Cal Poly Lion Dance Team has a total of eight lions, each with their own names.
The heads are made of a lightweight bamboo frame with a paper mache exterior. When the paper mache is dry, the lion is painted and the fur and other details are added.
Traditionally, different colors and details had different meanings, according to Koh. For example, he said the use of red and black together was a symbol for the god of war. Today, however, the colors don’t hold the same meaning as they used to and are based more on customer preference.
Inside the lion head, the eyes and ears are controlled with the pull of a string and the mouth is controlled by the performer’s other hand.
In January, the team received two new lions, just in time for the Lunar New Year performances.
These two lions were ordered in February 2023. The costume takes only about a week to make, but months to plan and ship, according to Koh.
The addition of these two lions will allow the team to expand their performances and finally give Ichigo — the newest and thus most used lion — a well deserved break.