Wednesday, October 7, 2009

金凤山宫神诞 | a Taoist Temple Celebration



I am not a religious person, but I love capturing these religious ceremony events through my shutter. They are part of our life and culture, I would always see them as an cultural art form.

It's kinda strange, when I was kid, grandma always asked me to hold the joss stick and kneel in front of Guan Yin Ma, and start murmuring about growing up healthy, get good results in school, even get a good wife in future, ha, joking. So I practice these "move" when I was a kid, after start getting to be more "knowledgeable", I these practices are like what the book Secret is talking about. Anyway, though I don't believe in religion, but now I would still take up joss stick and make some movement, just for my grandma and mum to see, you might say how bad I am, or how sweet I am to do something against myself to please my family.

Ok, back to the temple celebration of its God's birthday, traditional lion dance and dragon dance were hired to perform and bring the crowd high. And the most anticipated performance would be the Glow In The Dark dragon dance, it's quite cool, but my new camera wasn't that good enough to capture it under the dim light circumstance. Anyway, I can't recall when was the last time I enjoyed seeing this kind of performance, seeing kids around there watching til jaw on the floor, it's kinda fun, really.



the dragon dance, it's nice seeing youngster practicing the cultural art


It takes some great skill to lead the dragon head








Dragon on the move~!


It's glowing


This cute lion is with green flat face, and he is quite mad


This uncle is stapling the lucky number on the notice board


Prayer


Oil symbolizes wealth and peace, prayers donates oil in temple for ignition of oil lamp and so on


Another cute lion, attacking its commander


Here come the Big Show~!


Glow in the Dark, so cool right?


Ending Pose


CLICK BELOW FOR FULL ALBUM
Lion Dance and Dragon Dance

2 comments:

西門小弟 said...

you stand so near to shot, didn't scare to hit you?

Darren Lim :: 上煌 said...

Never mind if it hits me, as long as not hitting my cameras, haha.