 I think you're probably like, well, I'm just like, I'm just like, okay, well, you are. You're insane. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. You're okay. I I Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us here at the Mechanics Institute. I'm Laura Shepard, director of events, and we're very pleased to welcome you to our second annual Chinese Lunar New Year for the Year of the Dragons. And we're very pleased to welcome our very special guest, poet and author, Maxine Hon Kingston, historian and former Chinese New Year career director, David Lei, and educator and docent, Linda Lei. And so please give them a warm welcome. We're also very pleased to co-sponsor our program with the Chinese Historical Society. And also, if you are new to the Mechanics Institute, a little background, we were founded in 1854, and we're one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. We feature our General Interest Library, which is on the second and third floors. We have an international chess club, which is right down the hall. And we have ongoing author events, literary programs, classes, tournaments, learn chess from the beginning if you're a novice, or play with with an expert on Tuesday nights. Also Friday night, we have our cinema with film series, which is ongoing throughout the year. And you can find all of what we offer on our website at milibrary.org. So I hope that you'll consider becoming a member and take a look at what we have to offer. And also for those of you who are new, take a tour, a free tour on Wednesday at noon. Also, we'll, Alyssa, we'd like to give a quick tour this evening. So after our program, see Alyssa, who's our Senior Program Director and Director of Outreach and Community Outreach, and she will give you a tour of our gorgeous building and library and chess room. So we're here to celebrate the year of the dragon and all that it all that it symbolizes in terms of strength, good fortune, success, and the power of diversity. We're going to hear all about the symbols and mythologies and family history, the traditions that go along with the year of the dragon. But I'd first like to introduce our guests. Maxine Hong Kingston, as we know, is author of Woman Warrior, China Men, the Fifth Book of Peace, among other great titles. And her books are going to be for sale outside, not in the hallway after the event. She has recipient of numerous awards, including the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award. She was given the National Humanities Medal by President Clinton and the National Medal of Arts by President Obama. She worked for many years as a senior lecturer in creative writing at UC Berkeley and lives in Oakland, and we're also very pleased to welcome Earl Kingston here tonight. So thank you for joining us, Earl. I'd like to introduce David Lay, who has lived in the Bay Area. He was born in Taiwan, Cantonese parents, but he's been here since 1956. He attended public school and graduated from UC Berkeley in 1972 with a business degree. Lay worked as a social worker in San Francisco, Chinatown with at-risk youths for many years before starting his business in consumer product sourcing, which he sold in 2002-2003 and retired. His involvement with the Chinese New Year Parade and Festival, including being Parade Director, spanned over 40 years. Lay remains an active, very active in the community as ever working to introduce sustainable funding models to community-based organizations, and he feels that it's imperative to interpret Chinese-American history and Chinese art and culture in the American context. David, also be welcome back, Linda Lay. Linda is an educator with more than four decades of teaching experience in Mandarin and Chinese culture. Following her retirement from the Piedmont schools, Linda joined the Dosa Program at the Asian Art Museum, which has furthered her lifelong interest in Asian art while providing opportunities to continue teaching and sharing her love of Chinese calligraphy, painting, and storytelling with children and adults alike. Linda was elected Chair of the Dosa Council at the Asian Art Museum from 2020 to 2022, and during her tenure, she worked closely with the museum staff to adapt to a fully online learning environment in addition to leading in-person touring programs. Previously, Linda was Co-Chair of the Dosa Training Program and President for the Society for Asian Art, so please welcome our auspicious guests from Year of the Dragon. We wish the happy new year from a dragon. She said, I am a dragon, and Linda's a dragon too, so we've got two dragons up here, and when you are speaking Chinese, you don't say I was born in the year of the dragon. You don't say that. You say I am a dragon, so can we have a couple of dragons speaking to you today? We need ox too. You know, dragons are very powerful. The luckiest sign of the zodiac, creative, noble ideas. We have to express ourselves, and also we are very moody. You know, other dragons who are right here among us are Amy Tan and Frank Chin and Bruce Lee, so you can see that these aren't the people who create this Chinese culture in America. The dragon is the only, I was told I was supposed to hold it like this. Could you hear me? Okay, I couldn't do better. The dragon is the only non-real animal in the zodiac. It's a creature of the imagination, and our imagination travels everywhere, so the dragon travels through life and also knows death. The dragon can go to the other realms that the soul could go to. So I'm going to read to you a couple of paragraphs from the woman warrior, where Fa Mughlan goes into the wilderness in order to learn the powers of all the animals and creatures. She meets a rabbit, gets rabbit powers. She gets tiger powers, and then after I returned from my survival test, the two old people trained me in dragon ways, which took another eight years. Copying the tigers, their stalking kill, and their anger had been a wild, bloodthirsty joy. Tigers are easy to find, but I needed adult wisdom to know dragons. You have to infer the whole dragon from the parts you can see and touch the old people would say. I'm like tigers. Dragons are so immense. I would never see one in its entirety, but I could explore the mountains, which are the top of its head. These mountains are like the tops of other dragons' heads, the old people would tell me. With climbing slopes, I could understand that I was above riding on a dragon's forehead as it roams through space. It's speed so different from my speed that I feel the dragon's solid and immobile. In quarries I could see its strata, the dragon's veins and muscles, the minerals its teeth and bones. I could touch the stones the old woman wore, its bone marrow. I had worked the soil, which is its flesh, and harvested the plants and climbed the trees, which are its hairs. I could listen to its voice in the thunder and feel its breathing in the winds, see its breathing in the clouds, its tongue is the lightning and the red that the lightning gives to the world is strong and lucky in blood, poppies, roses, rubies, the red feathers of birds, turtle eyes, the cherry tree, the peony, the lion alongside the turtle's eyes and the mallards. In the spring when the dragon awakes, I watched its turning in the rivers. The closest I came to seeing a dragon whole was when the old people cut away a small strip of bark on a pine that was over 3,000 years old. The resin underneath flows in the swirly shapes of dragons. If you should decide during your old age that you would like to live another 500 years, come here and drink 10 pounds of this sack, they told me. But don't do it now. You're too young to decide to live forever. The old people sent me out into thunderstorms to pick the red cloud which grows only then a product of dragon's fire and dragon's rain. I brought the leaves to the old man and old woman and ate them for immortality. I learned to make my mind large as the universe is large so that there is room for paradoxes. Pearls are bone marrow. Pearls come from oysters. The dragon lives in the sky, ocean, marshes and mountains and the mountains are also its cranium. It's voiced thunders and jingles like copper pans. It breathes fire and water and sometimes the dragon is one, sometimes many. On New Year's morning the old man let me look in his water gourd to see my family. They were eating the biggest meal of the year and I miss them very much. I have felt love, love pouring from their fingers when the adults tucked a red money in our pockets. My two old people did not give me money but each year for 15 years a bead. After I unwrapped the red paper and rolled the bead out between thumb and fingers that took it back for safe keeping. We ate month's food as usual. Dragon as we know a dragon today is a fire animal but the dragon in the old Chinese days was water and we could see the dragon in the mist and in snow and in rain and in clouds. I now know I can see it very clearly. Try on a full moon night when it's cloudy and you will be able to see the dragon playing with the pearl. Okay the pearl is the moon but you can also see it as a pearl as the clouds swirl around and play with it. Sometimes at just the right moment when you can see a dragon sometimes the moon appears as its eye and in and there you will you will see a whole dragon. I want to show you a self-portrait that I did for the new years. This is the top over here is the way that you write dragon and uh oh I can see it this way you can see it better. The word for dragon has the word moon and you can sort of see this dragon playing with the moon which is the pearl that the dragon is playing with. Okay so this is in the old pictorial language okay so then China goes through cultural revolutions and this is the new way that they write it. It's so simple and and I just remember I remember my father as an old man trying to learn the new simple language and you say how can he can't do it he can't learn to do it. I really like the old way better because you can see all the complexity but also so all the the traditions keep changing too and in that same way and and we keep simplifying and we keep changing and another way that the language has changed is that that Mandarin became the standard Chinese and this Cantonese that most Chinese Americans were speaking did not become a standard language and I think that was a simplicity too because Cantonese has nine tones and Mandarin only has four so so the the the language changes and the customs change so I am thinking about the dragon in the old days when I was a kid in the 40s um the the dragon came to our house and and and it just went from house to house and we would we would wave lettuce in the air and the dragon would eat the lettuce and so lettuce has uh it it's the same hominem as uh as life long life and and so but nowadays when the dragon comes people are feeding it money wonderful in America lettuce money is also called lettuce so you know these these hominem go all over and so I I don't see people feeding it lettuce anymore so that's uh something that that has changed um there's an old picture that I saw of um of of Chinese immigrants from the beginning in the mid 19th century and uh they were uh they were not they they were all men and and they had made a dragon they had sewed it and it looked like they took all their ragged clothes and handkerchiefs and and and it wasn't of winding around or dancing they they were all in a straight row and just showing off this dragon so it it's it was the dragon in incarnating in America and a few years ago I saw a dragon that has become my favorite it was in Riverside California and the archaeologists were digging the old Chinatown which was underground and um and in celebration of of all that they were finding the the uh the children the grammar school children uh they uh they made a dragon and it was made out of all these children's cutouts and drawings and I could see the children's feet underneath and as they were winding around they were all wearing shorts and their their shoes I mean their legs were all different colors I could see blacks I could see brown people I could see pink and white people and and I thought and then I talked to the kids and they were talking about our dragon and yeah that's right this is their American dragon and it belongs to it belongs to all these kids and it's not Chinese anymore it's uh it's everybody's um then let me see oh here's a big change during new years it's the time to give Lacey red paper money and it's still handed out I think it's really wonderful that we have David and and Linda leg is it the same Lacey well in the uh oh seeing a child over there I remember there's a custom that my mother had around this new year's time she always had a pocket full of Lacey and she'd see a child and she'd give him a stranger so I didn't do this so is there anybody that remembers that tradition that often and so could you give me one I wonder what so here's a here's another one oh look at it was it wrapped in red okay okay oh good see we're bringing back some of the old traditions okay I'll have some bills after you buy my books in our family we've always been giving Lacey to the children and and then pretty soon the children are getting older and older and um and and then some of the children get married so so we've been telling them well if you're married then you have to give out Lacey and then it becomes very weird because sometimes a younger person is giving Lacey to an older person and then some people in our family have gotten divorced and then they've been saying I'm single now and then over so and then there are some that are living with somebody and they're not married and so do you give them Lacey or not so anyway the family has been working this out and all the time making new traditions because I think in China everybody got married and in China nobody got a divorce and so they didn't have to work this out so um so this is some of the problems we have to work on new years coming up in a few days uh okay let me see oh do I like you like the ones with black bean oh here's here's something that was happening when I was a kid when we made Lacey uh we would get red paper and fold the envelopes like origami and put the money inside and fold it and here's origami envelopes and then a few years later the the banks started giving away red envelopes and I think it's because Chinese people are such good savers and and so we'll be able to get the paper from the banks and then pretty soon the stores are selling envelopes and so today I had to go to the bank anyway because I need a pretty big size check so um so I thought this is a good time to ask do you have some red envelopes that you could give me and I was so surprised yes of course this is US Bank and they gave me stacks of red envelopes and then the woman who looked to me you're like Filipino and she says she says happy new year of my grandfather or somebody in the family's Chinese and then she says and I'm a gold dragon wow wow that's so we did high five and then she she made me think wait a minute I could say I'm a gold dragon too but I've never thought about it like that I'm a metal dragon so I always thought of it as iron you know I'm an iron dragon like Bruce Lee I have to put them up a metal you could choose any metal you want so she she stops on herself as a gold dragon giving me these envelopes pretty nice and I'm really happy to see that the banks are still giving up red envelopes or even as the US Bank is do you know any other banks wow they all do have an S oh good okay all right so okay so this year is a wood year so this is you know in the cycle in the 60 year cycle of five elements wood is the element I think it is so wonderful so different from from chemistry where they tell you about the elements and wood is an element and this is especially wonderful in this time when we are looking at climate change and the ecology and we want the trees to grow it is it is a year of wood which is a year of growth and development harmony balance and it is a time for uniting people and so so as a dragon who is bold and lucky and courageous and works hard I I want to I resolve to to make this year a year in which I am thinking about war and peace and and the environment all the time and so the dragons work for me is to imagine peace and to work hard for the for the trees and for our environment and and to work hard to unite people so happy new year oh all three of us were neighbors we lived within about a block or so of each other but uh so we're the rock rich from Oakland but we never got together to talk about this before tonight so I can say Maxine already said everything I was going to say you know so my mind was thinking about you think something that you might not know so I start off with this half is from the year of the metal dragon year 2000 and how many in the audience are dragons you're the dragon what a view so I have one extra one because the cycle for the Chinese we can say there's 12 animals so there's a 12 year cycle times the five elements so 60 years so hopefully you can remember this 60 years from now and you be up here on this here audience about dragon where's that hat I'm going to start off busting some myths about the lunar new year so we have 12 zodiac animals the dragon is the only mythological one it's the most powerful when do you become when do we change zodiac animals anyone know February every year well every year in change but when do we change the animal lunar for a reason it's a lunar okay so lunar year this year is when February 10th I'm a contrarian see for astrology is always based on the movement of these earth to the sun so we talk about the attribute of an animal based on astrology the planet the moon the sun the stars so in reality the Chinese based on the changing of the animal on leads when which is the arrival of spring or coming of spring when the earth is at 315 degree on the elliptical you see the earth goes around the sun not in the perfect circle within a elliptical but there's 360 degrees so it's divided into approximately 15 days so the Chinese has 24 of these sections of 15 degrees each as the solar part of their calendar is not a lunar calendar is a lunar solar calendar so the Chinese says the animal change on 315 degree which is usually February 4th and in this year is 1247 in the morning that you switch so if you're born 1246 you're still a rabbit but one minute later you're a dragon this makes sense because the Chinese like to match people based on their animal burden right if they're two three years you kind of know who's older younger and you can match them but if you do it on lunar new year some lunar year has 13 months so you're gonna have a lot of animals of that year and other years you have a lot less but it was you if we use leads when the beginning of spring February 4th is always even always even every year now when is lunar new year this year that means 10 I have news for you the definition of lunar new year is the second new moon after the winter solstice we can always check when winter solstice is then you go to your moon face website and look for the second new moon after that and that new moon happened the same time all over the earth so yes this February 10th in china which is 16 hours ahead of us if you take away the 16 hours lunar new year this year of the wood dragon is actually February 9th at 2 59 so i'm going to be celebrating February 9th at 2 59 and for astrology this is important the alignment of the stars and moon and the planet so to really get it correct you have to know where you're born and what time so the chinese this is we can predict someone's future by knowing the exact time so we never give this out it's like our social security number that people can read you know about you the only time you give this out is right before you're married to give your birthday and time to the family you're going to marry into to make sure you're compatible so they can take your birthday and time to the astrologers and say is this a compatible match and this used to be done all the time to for a match so you never give away your birthday and today too because of we want to keep these up to ourselves but so the chinese instead of having people's birthdays we have the seventh day of the lunar new year was the day of human so everybody's celebrating birthday on the seventh of the seventh day of the new year so that solves that so with that beginning i'll tell you something about uh well i was going to talk about prediction for this coming year but i think that's been covered by uh maxine pretty much so but when i was asked to give this talk and make prediction for the year of the dragon i do want everyone knows now i go to chat gpt and this is what has to say first of all is it won't make prediction because that's not scientific then he says the year of the wood dragon occurs once every 60 years in the chinese zodiac cycle people born in the year of the wood dragon are believed to possess certain characteristics associated with the dragon sun such as being confident ambitious charismatic the element of wood is associated with growth flexibility and vitality then here's a disclaimer it's important to note that these beliefs are part of the cultural traditions and should be taken as cultural expression rather than scientifically validated prediction so if you're interested in predictions or advice for the upcoming year is recommended to consult with experts in chinese astrology or cultural traditions who can provide these insights so that's chat gpt i think another year and a half we can't live without it that's a little taste of it so it's telling us to go to the experts and the chinese do go to these experts in fact on new year lunar new year's day all the chinese take off from work but the temples are open because that's the day the chinese go to the temple to predict the coming year and to think about their ancestors we really don't worship our ancestors we think about them so you go to the temple you think about them and there are fortune tellers at these temples so there are a few temples in china and you can look them up online teen health temple on waverly is probably the oldest they have to walk up four flights of stairs and the kong chow temple on the corner of stockton and clay they have elevators and a newer one is called the kong ming j emperors palace on powell street near the china library they're newer but it's wide open and you can go there and check it out and then you can go to china town and buy a chinese albinac which will predict the whole future the only problem is in chinese but now you can stand it and chat gpt will do all the predictions for you now i want to talk something about the dragon so here's what we have of the dragon for the parade this year we imported a brand new dragon for the year of the dragon it's being shown at embarked arrow sender three ground floor so if you want to go see it before the parade you can go see the new dragon but here you can let me see if this works so here's the long dragon uh has a big mouth with a tongue for the cantonese is very important if you want to get rich for the coming year you want to touch the tongue because the chinese word for tongue is lay and the word for profit is lay if you want to grab what you can so if you get a chance touch the dragon's tongue for prosperity if you want longevity you want to touch the long white beard and bring it towards you and you want health for your children when the dragon's parading down the street you ask your child to dart underneath the dragon or under the other side now we don't do this anymore because it's gonna be dangerous in the parade with cars and so on but when i was a kid in the 50s when the dragon came down the street you saw a lot of kids starting back and forth and it's actually quite fun but that's uh some of the positive aspects of it and along with the dragon we all know that it has a pearl and that's here and you also have to have a rooster that here's a rooster that accompanies the dragon also a fish that we don't see here and a basket of flowers plus the moon and the sun sun and the moon now for the chinese the position of things is very important because we have feng shui so for the chinese we always say male left female right this is from the stage so stage left is the male stage right is the female it's always this way and this is something you will find in stores they would have printed of the golden boy and the jay girl to welcome you for the new year the reason why is positioned here and so that you won't forget is the chinese word for good whole or how in mandarin and it's comprised of two words on the left is a son a boy and on the right is a daughter or female so when you have those placed properly we have goodness if you get it wrong you're missing goodness and this is a tradition all over china where how you place people so my wife wanted to sit there i said ah maybe not but this is held up all over china but we have one problem that we should start a movement here today for the gateway into china town the male lion should be stage left and the female lion stage right but the chinese did not put up this set of uh lions at the gateway into china on bush and grant they got it reversed so we haven't had goodness ever since they put it up so maybe we can have a movement to get the city to place them properly so then on this dragon we have the sun and moon and that's the place right because the sun is male is young on the left and the moon female on the right and i want to talk a little about about dragon the dragon always has a bump on the forehead so if you go to the market arrow center to see the dragon this bump is called qi mu and this gives the dragon the power to shrink in size so the dragon can be any size a silk worm to a mile long and this is what allows that to happen and also allow it to transport itself much ahead of star track be me up so if you dragon has the ability because of this and it keeps his pearl underneath his chin so if you see the older dragons they always have a little round bump underneath the chin that's where the dragon keeps his pearl and the dragon of course is made up of all the different animals it's the only mythological animal and it's the best parts of all the animals so it has the eyes of the rabbit of a rabbit the antlers of a deer or a stag of the mouth of a camel the head of a horse the body of a serpent scales of a carp by the way they're supposed to have 117 scales 81 yam scales for auspiciousness and 36 yin scales that's not as good but that's 117 scales it has talons of an eagle and legs of a tiger so it's really parts of all the animals so my interpretation today of what the dragon is is that it should be the symbol for america that if we embrace all the different cultures the best part of all the cultures then we become the most powerful and that's really the meaning of the dragon now at one time let me see if I can go to the next one so the dragons have many meaning we believe dragons started off as carts and they swam up river and if they jump over the dragon gate they become dragon this is like salmon swimming upstreams is a challenge so if you meet all your challenges you become a dragon so you would give a symbol of dragon or cart becoming a dragon to someone that just graduated from college you've achieved now you've become a dragon or someone who got promoted so this is a get a standard gift for people and you can go to the asian art museums and see a lot of these hidden meanings and symbols and the chinese use the dragon also for many symbolic reasons this is in a theater this is the great china theater today the great star theater on brand avenue this theater was opened in 1925 it's still there it still has its original backdrop but this was performed maybe in 1927 when china was trying to decide whether it should be a republic to have free election democracy or have a monarchy maintain this monarchy so there were a lot of warlords china was still fighting amongst itself so this is at the theater the at the time it was called a great china theater it was operated by the huo men down the people of the party that believed china should be a republic so they did this performance of a dragon here's the dragon head and the tail is up here somewhere and these are lions these are dragons and the dragon is comprised of people so they are pro republic they are saying now the emperor who has always been the dragon is no more the dragon is now comprised of the people it's a republic so this is quite nice to say that on stage without actually saying it by just doing this performance then we have lion dancing don't mix up the lions with the dragon lions are only two people the dragons are many people and what the lion is doing is getting the green which is also the money underneath the lettuce as well and the chinese the cantonese call this toy to get the greens and i'll go to the next and here we go so i'm back to this picture and i have told you that the sun and the moon are placed correct because the sun is always young so it stays left the moon should be stays right but if you look at the people carrying them they're facing this way so they're actually reversed so these people got a reversed and you said maybe they don't know actually the chinese and san francisco did this on purpose at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century when they wanted to pick out the manju these were a foreign group of people that took over china in 1644 and they want to restore the main dynasty so when they perform the dragon with the sun and moon reverse it forms the word mean like the main dynasty and when you perform lion dance and you choy chan go after the green in mandarin the word choy chan is chai ching to step on the ching dynasty and restore the main that's what they were doing okay uh i'll leave the rest of the time to my wife makers got our birthdays wrong 50 years of wrong actually you know david talked about some dragon you know uh chargeristic so did vaccine and what i will do is amadosan at the asian art museum and at the museum or any museum any asian museum you see a lot of dragon motifs so i will just show you a few and usually anything that is chinese with a certain kind of motif will have a hidden meaning behind it so i will talk a little bit about that and let me see oh okay here is a vase it is um one of the finest because it was um made in the imperial kiln site and it was made in the 17th century and as you can see this dragon is very you know powerful very rigorous and it's you know ascending to the sky but there's one thing it has how many claws or how many you know in how many look again five well five claw dragon is specifically reserved for the emperor so this was made during i said the 17th century it was during the reign of kang chi well kang she was the emperor that reigned 61 years so he was very powerful very rigorous and this red dragon shows the kang chi's reign going up and because of the five dragon you know it belongs to the emperor um i know this is chinese is you see um dragons in other countries motifs such as polia in japan but i don't think it means exactly the same as the chinese five claw dragon but you know it's imperial and one thing about this particular colors i don't know how many of you work with clay when you do glazing of the red color what happens well it's very difficult so 17th century the artisan will have to make this brilliant red fire it you know brilliantly and it also has the eyeballs are blue two dots of blue now blue the cobalt blue and the red color they fire at different temperature in order to appear you know blue or real brilliant red so for it to fire together under a clear glaze the artisan had to have a very narrow you know temperature range to achieve that so that's why it is really a masterpiece i have another piece of object it is an over vest on the left side is the whole thing it is about four feet long and that was again that's about 16th century and it was the time it was in fashion for the imperial women to wear this type of a vest but it has two dragons so let's look at the dragons again five claws you know five claws so why would that be a woman's garment it has two words on top it says longevity so it's it's a it's an over vest made for somebody for perhaps a birthday and it has the dragons rising from the rods from the sea and with lots of jewels well they all mean a lot of auspiciousness so it has so much auspiciousness and it's also embroidered every entry is embroidered it's you know very superb workmanship and inside the lapel actually it has an embroidered date and it said whatever you know year and the date and it was during the emperor one lease rain and it translates to exactly december 5th 1595 so that just happened to be two days before the birthday the 50th birthday of the empress dowager lee one lee empress mother so even though it did not tell us who this vest was made for the scholars guess that it must be the emperor ordered for the celebration as a gift to his mother's 50th birthday in those days you know 50 is pretty old what's coming nowadays you know 80 or 90 but if this is a very beautifully and well preserved silk vest totally embroidered front and back i mentioned you know besides the chinese other countries also use the dragon as a motif here is a korean jar it's about 14 and a half inches you know globular shape but it has a dragon painted on it we put the four you know four sides together so you can see the dragon this dragon is what floating in the sky and the rendering or the brushstroke is very energetic and yet very free in a way and it kind of twists and turns all the way around chase after the pearl it is it is um fired with the iron oxide which turns kind of a reddish or reddish brown but in this case i think the korean potter wanted it to be kind of brownish very earthy and one thing you look at the head of the dragon oh i forgot to have you look at the head of the dragon of the other one that the chinese one but it's a little bit on the whimsical side and that's one of the characteristics of the korean artisans whenever they render some kind of an animal it turns out to be a little bit on the whimsical side whereas the chinese um animals tend to be a little bit what we call stoic in a way and the dragons in the east asian countries you know we um they're very benevolent because they make rain however in the western culture dragons are not necessarily benevolent right um usually they're kind of uh uh overgrown some kind so that is the difference between east and west now we have a lot of traditions as you see around the room we have these red couplets we have writings we have you know lanterns and certain things we do for the new year in fact there is a story behind every day of the new year 15 days we celebrate from the new moon to the full and um i when i was young i have a set of books that that gives every one of the stories behind that so i'm going to tell a story about new year's eve into new year's stage that's first day and here is a picture that i took many many years ago of a book i owned when i was a teenager it has everything about the story but it's not in the perfect you know picture i think if i had iphone at the time i would have a better picture but since i moved i can't find a book anymore and it's out of print so anyway the story goes the legend says there was a monster named man that lives down in the ocean for 364 days on new year's eve it's just so hungry you know rap it comes on shore and wants to be everything in its path even humans so all the villagers you know on new year's eve would run away hide in the mountains try to flee this awful monster named man well one year a grandmother in the village said you know i'm so tired of running i'm not running anymore that's it you know and she saved a few dumplings for herself after her last meal and just waited for the monster to come all of a sudden i knocked on her door a very tired old traveler said i'm so hungry do you have case bearing food well old grandma was you know very good hearted she said you can have my last meal but you have to run right away because you know monster is coming and well the old man after he ate he was very appreciative and said why do i help you to get rid of this beast she said are you kidding he said well do you have any red paper or red cloth you can put on the front door she said oh from the wedding yes i can put some red paper up on the front door um do you have any bamboo oh i grow some right outside or right in my yard so the old man cuts a bamboo into sections and he also asked the grandmother do you have any meat to chop she said i don't have any more food but i still have my big chopping board and my cleavers he said yes pretend the child when i give you the signal all of a sudden a big roar and this monster you know full of scales and with big bulging eyes was coming down the street towards grandmother's house because because it smelled blood all of a sudden got to the front door a flash of a red oh the monster said what is that color i hate red it's hurting my eyes and then the old man said start chopping and the grandmother started to chop as hard as she could on that big chopping board with the big cleavers and the old man put a fire underneath the um uh bamboo and then start to start to explode so between the monster man he said oh so much noise i can't stand it so overwhelmed he ran away or the monster ran away so that's why right after that we started to mimic what grandmother did to chase away the monster man and now the red paper became what as you can see we put couples red um auspicious saints around our doorway from door how about the fire i mean how about the uh bamboo became firecrackers how about the chopping sound dropping so these are some of the customs that we practice we almost take it for granted but in this one story it has everything in it so that's why i like it and this is the version you probably hear other versions this is the version i heard when i was a child and also in that book and i love this picture actually because in one picture it shows everything you see that's why you know i i never want to present anything with him i haven't gotten there yet all right he mentioned it is there a significance to the word man or the name of the beast man also means year it's the exact same word because in the agrarian society to pass a whole year it's very difficult right it's like what you have to beat the beast so that's why if someone is able to survive that that's why we can just meet the challenges of the beast man and survive the year and on new year's day that's why we all congratulate each other because when we say gong xi gong xi like these two you know children are putting their fists together saying gong xi gong xi in korean is gong pe gong pe so that is what congratulations congratulations you survived the year and that's what we do on new year's day another new year is a time for families and friends to get together and wish each other good health happiness peace and prosperity and that's what all three of us wish for all the views in the year of the dragon thank you is there any reason why our school gets upside down all the time yes oh i'm glad you asked that because this word it's placed upside down because the chinese language is very conducive to hominoms rebuses and the word for blessing and the word for upside down is thao thao is also the word for upside down so for me to put blessings upside down our blessing has arrived uh we've got a microphone for questions so if you've got a question raise your hand and i'll come around for the microphone sir question the asian art museum our local is an upside down a any mathematicians in the room well it is a math simple for for all so asian art museum or asian art for all linda i have a question are too young our suspicious guests may have to have formal names yes um jing tong yu davison is is the golden boy and the jade girl questions anyone i don't have you know you i'm coming around with a microphone no no hold on keep your microphone as someone who is a mother of a dragon i would like some advice from your dragons how do you nurture and inspire a dragon now what kind of dragon are you do you know which year i don't know either but anyway maybe you have more experience what do you think okay what's what are you homie a chicken raising a dragon i i think you have to be very sensitive one suggestion listen to mom actually um i i think chicken or rooster you represent family unity so i think every year when you um you when you look at albana i guess that's the only way and it will have an opposing um a zodiac sign that you should be wearing and i was told this year i should be wearing a chicken so what does that mean young man so it must be compatible yeah in some way otherwise if we put together for each other why is the rooster well number one is yeah i mean but there's a story about the rooster and the dragon now one time the dragon didn't have horns but the rooster had horns beautiful horns so one day the dragon says can i uh dragon ask a rooster can i borrow your horns for a day of important party to go to and i would like to strut these horns and the rooster says why not if you're going to return it tomorrow morning at the break of day and the dragon says i promise i promise i promise but the dragon never appeared that's why the rooster gets up every morning and say gawk gawk gawk gawk gawk gawk gawk gawk gawk gawk is the cantonese word for horns so he's looking up the sky saying horn horn horn where are my horns i don't know i was pulling this any other questions curiosities well in that case i'd like to thank our auspicious and wonderful guests for this this prelude to the new year year the dragon um and we wish you all prosperity peace good health and happiness and a little bit of that optimism and idealism to change the world the things that need to be changed and move forward for a world of peace and compassion so i thank you again and also for your wonderful stories and great good humor we love having you here and we'll come back next year i'd like to invite you to purchase books we have a selection of maxine from here so books outside and hallway and have another cup of tea before you leave warm yourself before you go out and