We welcomed the Year of the Fire Horse at the National Museum of Asian Art yesterday. We arrived about a half hour before the lion dance was scheduled to start so we wandered around the museum, looking at early modern Japanese pottery and ancient Iranian metalwork. Have you ever heard about the tradition of mending broken pottery with gold and how this practice could be seen as a symbol of how our scars can be seen as something that makes us stronger or more beautiful? I feel like I see it all the time on social media and I don’t know if that was the original symbolic intention, but I did see a pot like that, which was kind of cool.
We went outside to the steps of the museum, which were crowded with people who had come to watch the lion dance. It started about fifteen minutes late and the couple behind us was having a protracted discussion about whether it was worth continuing to wait. It was. There were two full-sized lions (one purple and one red), with two adults inside each, and one orange baby lion with two small children inside. The three lions danced to the music of the drums and received red envelopes from a few members of the crowd and pretended to gobble fortune cookies out of a basket on the ground and then threw the cookies to the crowd. The baby lion had a chaperone, an adult not in costume who followed it around and gave it instructions when it got off course. It was seriously cute.
We used to go to see the Lion Dance in Chinatown occasionally when we lived in D.C., and I think we might have taken Noah once when he was very small (pre-blog). Seeing the tiny children inside the dragon costume did shake loose a memory I hadn’t thought of in ages. One year one of my grad school professors at the University of Maryland invited her students to see a lunar new year performance at her small son’s Chinese dance school, followed by a buffet feast. Try as I might, I could not remember her name or even what class she was teaching but I remember her son’s first name, even though I only met him once. It was Logan, which his mother explained his parents gave him because it was an English name that sounded like a Chinese one. (The child was biracial.) It’s funny the little glimpses into other people’s lives we remember years later. Given that this event happened about thirty years ago, Logan could have his own kid old enough to learn the lion dance by now.
When the dance was over, we headed over to the Arts and Industries Building, where there were food and crafts booths and more performances. I initially had some trouble finding food that was both vegetarian and not too diabetic-unfriendly, but I ended up with eggrolls, a tofu dish, and half a small and very expensive Korean black sesame seed cheesecake, which I shared with Noah. Beth and Noah had noodles, and she got a Vietnamese bahn mi sandwich, which is a favorite of hers. Everything was delicious. I only regretted that I couldn’t have a Thai iced tea. I used to love those, but they are super sweet and I have yet to try one since diabetes. We briefly listened to some Mongolian singers before heading home.
As we walked across the Mall, headed back to the Metro, I was feeling emotional about multiculturalism. When the kids were small and we’d go to the Folklife Festival (which, sadly, has been cancelled for this year in favor of some fake State Fair* on the mall) or to Takoma Park’s Fourth of July parade and we’d be watching musicians and dancers from all over the world and eating food from different cultures I would so often talk to the kids about how the United States is a country of immigrants that one year when Noah was around twelve he interrupted and supplied the lesson himself. But it’s true. I like living in a country and a region with a lot of immigrants. I think it makes us stronger and more interesting.
So that’s one reason Beth has gotten involved with a local organization that helps support immigrant communities. She’s not sure what she’ll be doing yet—maybe delivering groceries to people who are afraid to leave their houses, maybe observing drop-offs and pickups at our kids’ old majority-Latino elementary school in case ICE shows up. It’s a way to protect and give back to the people who make our home a culturally richer place.
By the way, I read that the year of the fire horse, which happens only every sixty years is supposed to “bring intense, fast-paced change.” That could certainly be good or bad. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for good.
*No shade to real state and county fairs, which I really like.