Lion teams roar to life

THIS year’s Bendigo Easter Festival will include the largest gathering of Chinese cultural performance groups in Australia.

Secretary of the Bendigo Chinese Association, Brian Lagoon, said this weekend the town will welcome seven groups from other areas.

“It’s the only opportunity in Australia, really, for lion teams to come together and see what each other are doing,” he said.

“There are friendships that have been built up over the years, just from people who come to Bendigo every year.

These groups will be involved in several events across Saturday and Sunday and will kick off with Xĭ Qìng, or Joyous Celebration, at 11am Saturday at the Dai Gum San precinct outside the Golden Dragon Museum.

Xĭ Qìng comes before the more than 100-year-old Awakening of the Dragon ceremony and was previously known as Chinese Spring Festival.

The Chinese Spring Festival was created about 10 years ago to give visiting lion teams an opportunity to perform.

“Because we’re getting so many visiting teams, there wasn’t all the time in the program on the Sunday afternoon to fit everybody in,” said Mr Lagoon.

“Most of them all perform again in the afternoon in the Awakening of the Dragon, so they’re limited to 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the afternoon, so we extended it.”

Mr Lagoon said there are hundreds of performers as well as volunteers for the different events of the festival.

The Bendigo Chinese Association is looking for extra volunteers to carry the organisation’s dragons and banners right up until the performances, and people can sign up at the group’s rooms at the corner of Bridge and Cemetery streets.