Rituals and etiquette

Awakening a new lion: what the rite is and what it is called

A new southern lion head is built from bamboo or rattan, paper, glue, paint and fur. Until it is consecrated it counts as a prop or a piece of handicraft. Practitioners from Shenzhen to Boston say it should not be danced, worshipped or used for a blessing before then.¹²³ A Boston head maker told a Chinatown heritage audience that before the eye-opening the head is a construction, and that afterwards it has a spirit and must be treated with respect for the rest of its life.⁴ He described the unconsecrated head this way:

it's just papier-mache and plastic and bamboo

Ken Morin, Boston head maker, Boston Chinatown Immigrant Heritage Center talk, @ 05:34

The rite has several names, and sources use them as near synonyms. The table gives the ones you will meet, with the Chinese forms and the equivalents in the other languages that appear in this chapter.

Every source agrees on the core of the rite. A respected person dots the lion with red pigment so that it can see, hear, smell and taste and then do its work of driving off evil and bringing luck.¹¹¹²¹³ Beyond that core the details change from school to school. Lee, who wrote the fullest English account, says there is no single fixed way, and the Foshan tutorial says each school and lineage has its own version of the verse (各師各法, Cant. gok3 si1 gok3 faat3, Mand. gè shī gè fǎ, "each master has his own method").⁹¹⁴¹⁵ Where this chapter gives a sequence, read it as one lineage's practice and check it against your own teacher's.

Why the rite exists and where it comes from

Sources give three overlapping reasons.

• Life. Lee glosses hoi gwong as opening up the lion so that the light, meaning spirit, can enter. The Singapore heritage inventory says the dotting gives the lion life.⁹¹³
• Safety. Lee reports that an unblessed lion is variously said to be blind, untamed and wild, or open to possession by a malevolent being, which is why the head stays covered until the rite. A Los Angeles team calls lions agents of heaven and the red ribbon the sign that the lion is tamed for a happy occasion.⁹¹¹
• Borrowed fortune. The dotter is often read as passing good fortune to the lion. The Foshan tutorial picks an elder with a complete family (see below) without saying why, and the Cleveland team gives the lion a red envelope so that it can give fortune back.¹⁴¹⁶

The rite has older parallels. A Chinese Academy of Social Sciences essay by Xie Zhongyuan says early dotting used chicken blood, which he traces to a pre-Qin custom of sacrificing a rooster to drive out pestilence (磔雞, Cant. zaak6 gai1, Mand. zhé jī).¹⁷ Encyclopedias place lion consecration within the wider Taoist and Buddhist custom of dotting the eyes of statues, and note that a senior secular dignitary may be invited when the object is a lion costume.⁵³

Before the ceremony: date, covered eyes, altar and materials

Date and hour

Sources do not agree on a timetable, but all of them treat timing as important.

Keeping the lion asleep

In Lee's secular method the body is attached to the head just before the rite, and the head, or at least its eyes, is covered with red cloth and the mouth kept shut so that no malevolent spirit can enter beforehand.⁹ French practitioners describe a red ribbon over the eyes of a new head and say that until the head is finished the lion is said to be asleep.²⁵ In Vancouver the lions sit with their eyes closed while a light drum roll plays.²⁶ Vietnamese artisans deliberately leave the eyes unpainted, and a folk belief holds that the first person the newly opened creature sees becomes its master.¹⁰

Altar and offerings

Lee's secular layout is the most detailed. The altar stands in the open, facing the school's patron saint or the school entrance, with an incense pot flanked by candles, three rows of three plates of food (sweets, cakes, fruit), three cups of wine, three cups of tea and a vase of flowers at each side. Lee reads the three rows as the trigram 乾 (Cant. kin4, Mand. qián), the most yang and the gate that generates life, and notes that 三 (saam1, "three") sounds like 生 (saang1, "life"). A side tray holds golden flowers, a red ribbon, greens, a pair of tangerines, a red packet with lai see (利是, Cant. lai6 si6, Mand. lìshì), a writing brush, and cinnabar mixed with water in a divot cut into ginger.⁹

Who officiates

The Foshan tutorial gives an extra qualification. In it the ceremony is led by an elder who is widely respected and has a complete family, meaning parents still living plus children and grandchildren (父母子孫齊全, Mand. fùmǔ zǐsūn qíquán).¹⁴ The tutorial does not give a reason, but the usual reading is that his good fortune is meant to pass to the lion. The other sources read describe the dotter only as highly respected, a senior or a public figure, and do not state this condition. Treat it as a Foshan expectation rather than a universal rule.

The dotter is usually thanked with a red packet. In several accounts the honoured guest puts a red packet in the lion's mouth or hands one to the lion directly, and ACTA notes that red-envelope money offered to the team that performed the ceremony is folded into the shape of a ruyi scepter, for fulfilled wishes.²⁷³⁸¹¹

The Foshan sequence, step by step

The clearest published sequence comes from a Foshan tutorial series by the Huang Feihong lion dance association, whose first episode is the new-lion activation ceremony. Its content is read here from the video's burned-in Chinese subtitles. It opens by saying that before a new lion dances for the first time it must go through 開光點睛, with incense burned and wine offered (焚香祭酒, Cant. fan4 hoeng1 zai3 zau2, Mand. fénxiāng jìjiǔ).@ 0:00¹⁴ A 2017 practitioner blog gives the same steps in nearly the same words and adds a sixth, the lion's own salute.²

1. Offering, 祭祀 (Cant. zai3 zi6, Mand. jìsì). Prepare the offerings, candles and incense. The elder washes his hands in clear water in which pomelo leaves have soaked (淨手, Cant. zing6 sau2, Mand. jìngshǒu), then lights the candles and incense before the deity position (神位, Cant. san4 wai2, Mand. shénwèi). @ 0:15
2. Warding off evil, 辟邪 (Cant. pik1 ce4, Mand. bìxié). Holding gold ingot paper in both hands, he walks one full circle around the lion, which lies on the ground. He then returns to the altar and burns the paper. @ 0:31
3. Pinning flowers, hanging red, 簪花掛紅. He ties the gold hairpin flowers (釵花) onto the horn with a strip of red cloth. In this version it comes before the dotting. Lee notes that some groups do it at the end, and a 2024 article and a Foshan Ancestral Temple team place it after the dotting.⁹¹³² @ 0:46
4. Dotting the eyes, 點睛. With a writing brush dipped in cinnabar he dots the parts one after another and calls out a line of verse (口訣, Cant. hau2 kyut3, Mand. kǒujué) at each. The verse must be auspicious and harmonious. The order is forehead, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, the four feet, the horn, and finally one stroke from head to tail. @ 0:57
5. Sprinkling clean, 灑淨 (Cant. saa2 zing6, Mand. sǎjìng). He dips pomelo leaves in the pomelo-leaf water and sprinkles the lion's head. The video says this washes away the old, opens a new chapter, and wakes the lion. @ 1:55
6. The lion's salute (from the blog, not the video). The awakened lion performs three bows and nine kowtows (三拜九叩, Cant. saam1 baai3 gau2 kau3, Mand. sān bài jiǔ kòu) to the deity tablet and dances. One style then performs "twin phoenixes face the sun" (雙鳳朝陽, Cant. soeng1 fung6 ciu4 joeng4) and ends with a full spin meaning all in harmony (一團和氣).²

The verse is where lineages differ most. The table lines up three published sets: the Foshan tutorial together with the 2017 blog (the video gives the sense of each line and the blog gives the characters), a Shenzhen lineage written up in 2022, and a verse that Lee attributes to Lim Meng Kok of the Meng Kok Association in Malaysia. Cantonese teams chant these lines in rhythm. Only the written forms survive in the sources.¹⁴²²²⁹

The orders differ as well as the words. The Shenzhen lineage dots the forehead, eyes, mouth and tongue, ears, horn, then head to tail, so the mouth comes before the ears. Lee's order is mirror, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, horn, spine, and nowadays the legs as well if the lion has matching trousers.²²⁹

After the dots: waking the lion

Accounts of the first dance share one shape: the drums start, the lion opens its eyes, rises, looks for food and is fed. In the Shenzhen lineage the leader shouts 起鼓 when the brush reaches the tail, the lion stands, pounces, takes lettuce from the ground, chews and scatters it, and the ritual ends when the deities are sent back to heaven (送神, Cant. sung3 san4, Mand. sòngshén).²²

Lee's secular method is more specific. The drummer taps the rim twice and plays the rolling-thunder roll softly until the lion wakes. The head player makes the lion blink, the first sign of life, then the ears flick once and the mouth opens and closes. Once awake the lion is fed greens, tangerines and a red packet to quench its hunger from the long journey from heaven, the dancers receive lai see, and gold and silver paper is burned and firecrackers lit to thank and send off the deities.⁹ In Malaysia the lion rises, offers greens and mandarin oranges and makes a "Di Qing" formation (the ground-green arrangement, see Chapter 10) for the person who awakened it, and the music speeds up.¹⁸ An Indonesian account has it give three bows and then three more toward the altar before its debut.³⁰

A Taoist method (one account)

Lee describes a third family of method with priests officiating. The lions lie on a table before the altar with eyes and mouth wired shut. A charm is burned and its ash put in wine, which a live rooster is made to drink. The comb tip is pinched for blood, which goes on the mirror in a taiji-shaped stroke and then on the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, horn and body. The mouth is ritually locked so that it can do no harm, a pair of charms is pasted on the back of the head, and the horn gets a red ribbon and golden flowers.⁹ Lee also names a Buddhist method, but the archived page read here covers only the secular and Taoist ones, and no second source confirms the Taoist description.

Regional and diaspora variants

Hong Kong and Macau

Hu Xuchun, of the Choy Li Fut Hu Xuchun Martial Arts Dragon and Lion Association in Hong Kong, was shown in People's Daily in 2022 dotting the eyes, mouth, tongue and head with a red brush while chanting 左眼精，右眼靈，紅光萬象，富貴繁榮 (left eye sharp, right eye alert, red light over all, wealth and prosperity).³⁹ Hong Kong's heritage inventory lists the Man Cheong and Mo Tai festival at Pak Ngan Heung, Mui Wo, whose rituals include an eye-opening ceremony for lions.⁴⁰ In Macau in 2023 hotel management worshipped the gods first and then dotted lions at the hotel entrances amid firecrackers.³⁵ Whether Hong Kong teams still use Taoist ritual specialists for 開光 is not settled by the sources.

Guangdong: Guangzhou, Foshan and Shenzhen

One Shenzhen (Bao'an) lineage dots at night beside an old tree, chosen because its roots reach the earth and its crown heaven. All lights are off, the participants stand at five positions (east, south, west, north and the tree at the centre), incense is lit and spirit money burned at each, and the most prestigious person present invokes the Jade Emperor and Laozi while holding talismans.²² This is one author's account of one lineage.

Japan

On 24 September 2019 the Yokohama Yamate Chinese School held an awakening for 70 lions at the Guan Di temple of Yokohama, opened with three rounds of drum rolls and nine gong strokes and the formula consecrating the brush, mirror and cinnabar.³³

Malaysia and Singapore

Malaysia's national culture department documents the rite in two portal entries. One, from Kuala Lumpur, lists lime leaves to remove bad luck, ginger to remove "wind", red powder to repel evil spirits and a white brush for purity, all on a red plate. The other, from the Yi Meng Lion Arts team in Puchong, adds red ribbons to restrain the lion's wild nature, lettuce, kaffir lime and pomelo, bells and a drum, and says the troupe head or a sponsor leads.²⁹²⁸ Universities hold it too: Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman's Sungai Long campus awakened two gold lions, a blue lion and a dragon in 2019 and repeated the rite in 2024.¹² A Penang master says the old full sequence of awakening, looking for the green, finding it and returning used to take about an hour.⁴¹ Dragons have a crossing rule of their own. Coach Han (汉教练/漢教練) of the Yahya Awal temple dragon troupe in Johor Bahru (耶耶亚哇洪仙大帝庙舞龙队/耶耶亞哇洪仙大帝廟舞龍隊) says in a LongShi Stories podcast interview that its old dragons each carried a talisman of the temple's deity, Hong Xian Da Di, on the body and on the head, and that the talisman meant the troupe could not cross over them, so it could only perform a plain dragon dance. LongShi Stories EP.3, Coach Han @ 07:10.⁴² A Singaporean master brought in to teach it routines asked its head coach to seek the deity's consent, with three "Holy Grail" results in a row required before crossing (the captions' rendering of the divination blocks, 聖杯/圣杯, Mand. shèngbēi); the troupe says it obtained seven in a row.⁴²

Vietnam

A Lâm Đồng newspaper describes the khai quang điểm nhãn held each year between the 20th and 29th of the twelfth lunar month: incense to thank heaven and earth (dâng hương tạ ơn trời đất), presentation to the troupe's craft ancestor (ra mắt Tổ nghề), dotting of the lân, of Ông Địa (the earth god figure) or the sư lion, and of the dragon, then a procession to temples. The items are red paint, ginger and a pine branch, and each year's head is made to resemble that year's zodiac animal with its eyes left blank.²³ Among the Nùng people of Cao Bằng, an offering asking the spirits' permission is required before the kỳ lân head is taken down for festivals.⁴³ No source read covers a Vietnamese mourning lion or end-of-season rites.

Indonesia

A lifestyle article says the kai guang or dian jing ceremony wakes the lion and invites protective spirits. A religious leader, community elder (adat) or community figure dots with red ink or holy water: the eyes to tell good from evil, the ears to hear prayers, the mouth to bring blessings, the forehead to repel misfortune.³⁷ A Chinese-Indonesian culture forum adds that a strip of red cloth is then tied to the horn to show the lion is tame.³⁰ A 2022 case study of the Surya Naga team in Surabaya says that before the reform era the team bowed three times to the altar and used oranges (luck), mustard greens (prosperity) and water (life) and that the ritual is now optional and set by the host.⁴⁴

France

A French ministry inventory of Asian lion dance in the Paris region records new heads being "baptised" before first use, with a red ribbon over the eyes and an honoured guest painting the eyes of each head.²⁵

Accounts at a glance

United States and Canada, with Massachusetts examples

Teams outside Asia have kept the rite, often as a public event. The sources record these cases, and the wider American story is in Chapter 13.

Massachusetts State House, 14 May 2018

A recap video by Wah Lum Malden and Quincy documents a one-off eye-dotting in the building's highest public space during Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. A speaker says 18 lions and a dragon from 10 schools took part, almost unheard of since she had expected one or two, with elected officials of all levels as witnesses. Another speaker remarks that a new lion could easily cost $1,000.⁴⁶ The recap runs only 2 min 29 s and gives no ritual details, so it does not show who dotted, in what order, or with what pigment. @ 01:36

Cleveland: what each step gives the lion

The Kwan Family team, which has opened the Cleveland Asian Festival since 2010, awakened a new lion on stage in 2023 and its leader, George Kwan, explained each step.@ 02:06¹⁶ Treat the explanations as one family's tradition, since no other source read repeats them.

The Hawaii association's account adds that the lion bows three times at the start, each bow for heaven, earth and man, and that the red ribbon shows the lion is awake.³¹

Before the performance: positions, salutes and bows

The Foshan etiquette episode opens by calling China a nation of rites and saying the awakening lion has its own set of handed-down customs for every stage: putting a new lion into use, the order of setting out (出獅順序), meeting another lion (會獅), and the dance itself.⁵¹ The CASS essay lists the occasions that carry etiquette (greeting guests, parading, entering houses and temples, meeting lions and starting a dance) and sums them up as "three observances and seven taboos" (三遵循七禁忌) without saying what they are.¹⁷ No source read for this chapter lists them.

The order below combines the Foshan tutorial with the 2017 practitioner blog. Where the two differ, the difference is marked.

1. Rest position. Before the lion dances it lies flat on the ground. The head dancer stands to the right of the head and the tail dancer beside the tail.⁵¹
2. Drum signal. The blog says the drummer strikes the drum rim three times to get everyone ready and then rolls the drum for the salute.⁵²
3. Martial salute. The players give a fist-in-palm salute (抱拳禮, Cant. pou5 kyun4 lai5, Mand. bàoquán lǐ) before touching the lion. The Foshan instructor says lion etiquette comes from martial-arts etiquette and each school opens with its own fist salute, his Hung Kuen school using its Hung Kuen opening salute.@ 0:10⁵¹⁵³ A Guangzhou national inheritor says the fist salute (拳禮, Cant. kyun4 lai5) is what traditional lion activity values most, and the national heritage register says the performance opens with a southern-fist set to drums (開樁, Cant. hoi1 zong1).⁵⁴⁵⁵ The Shenzhen lineage uses left palm over right fist, and a Wisconsin Sar Ping teacher describes right fist into left palm as yin and yang in harmony.²²⁵⁶
4. Picking up the lion. The head dancer jumps to the lion and drops to one knee (單跪步, Cant. daan1 gwai6 bou6), puts his hands inside to support the frame, opens a horse stance and holds a set pose while the tail dancer adjusts, then lifts with the arms only, body still (grips and stances are in Chapter 8). The instructor warns against grabbing the lion by the eyes, the horn or other parts. The rule was handed down by ancestors, he says, and breaking it brings bad luck, things not going as wished and unhappiness. He compares it to pulling someone's ear and says kneeling shows respect to the lion and the host.@ 0:31⁵³ The blog has both dancers enter from the lion's left.⁵²
5. Three bows. With the head raised the lion advances in quick close steps and gives three salutes. The order of the three differs between sources (table below).⁵¹⁵² Only after the bows does the dance proper begin.

The drum salute

The drum marks each stage of the salute, and the way it does so varies by lineage.

Shaolin Wahnam's 2019 Kuala Lumpur lion course listed separate greetings for the Fut San lion and the Hok San lion, with drumming titles such as "Rolling Thunder for Greeting". Only the course titles were available, so what the two greetings look like is not known.⁶¹ The Sar Ping and Hok San drum patterns are in Chapter 7 and the Sar Ping lineage in Chapter 5.

Two instruments with their own rules

Two instrument taboos are recorded. Do not strike the drum, gong or cymbals without a reason: 空 ("empty") and 凶 ("ominous") are exact homophones in Cantonese (both hung1), and folk explanations add that cymbals go with funeral chanting and gongs were village alarms. These explanations come from a student exhibition citing a 2007 book and are folk belief.⁶³ In the Taiwan Hakka tradition, a gong must never be struck alone, because that sounds like retreat or an alarm and, in front of an ancestral hall, announces a funeral. The drum and gong must not stop while the team circles the village.⁶⁴

Entering a house, a hall or a temple

Traditional sources describe entry as a sequence with its own drum signals.

• Test the door. The Hong Kong school notes say that before entering a temple or house the lion kneels and bows to a drum roll, and that Seven-Star drumming is played to "test the door frame" (試門邊, Cant. si3 mun4 bin1) before going in. After entry there is no Seven-Star and no kicking, only Three-Star and rolls with kneeling bows.⁵⁷
• Door-frame sequence. The 2017 blog has the lion enter from the right, probing the door (探門, Cant. taam3 mun4), biting the door edge (咬門邊, ngaau5 mun4 bin1), rubbing the door (擦門) and circling the pillars (纏柱, cin4 cyu5) before it worships the deity tablets. A second post adds that the lion bites the left and right door-frame edges and the threshold, then plays Seven-Star and jumps in because old thresholds were high.⁶⁵⁶⁶
• Inside. The lion bows at every shrine it sees and, in an ancestral hall, performs three bows and nine kowtows before the tablets. Some schools bow to the four corners of the house (拜房屋四角) and others do not.⁶⁵⁶⁶
• Leaving. The lion backs out tail first, on bent knees, and must never turn round to leave.⁶⁵ The Shenzhen article says it bows three times to the host and leaves the host's ground backward, never turning its rear to the host: it begins with courtesy and ends with courtesy.²²

Temples, ancestral halls and the Guan Gong altar

The CASS essay says each martial hall and lion troupe keeps tablets to Guan Gong (關公, Cant. gwaan1 gung1, Mand. Guān Gōng, the deified general Guan Yu) and to the founding master (祖師, Cant. zou2 si1), and worships them regularly. At festivals lions go to the temples of Guan Di, the North Emperor, Tin Hau (Mazu) and the Earth God to worship and dance, and before entering an ancestral hall, house or shop, and before the cai qing, the lion bows first to the deity tablet.¹⁷ The team's lead standard (頭牌, Cant. tau4 paai4) traditionally carries Guan Gong on its back and must not be held upside down or set on the ground.²² Guan Yu is also described as patron saint of many martial arts schools.⁶⁷

The link shows up in practice: the Yokohama awakening began at a Guan Di temple, a Kuala Lumpur team held an eye-dotting at the Guan Di temple on Petaling Street, and a Malaysian temple-festival record has the lion going up the ramp to pay respects before it performs.³³⁶⁸⁶⁹ A Taiwan Hakka lion that passes a temple performs the full set, never a token pass.⁶⁴ A California nonprofit also lists testing the door and bowing to Buddha figurines.⁷⁰

Bowing to the four gates (拜四門)

The phrase 拜四門 (Cant. baai3 sei3 mun4, Mand. bài sì mén, "bowing to the four gates") appears in none of the sources read for this chapter, and a last search for it found nothing either. Related forms do appear. Taiwan's closed-mouth lion has a routine called 四門到底, a Shaolin Wahnam course listed "Four Directions Showing Majesty", and some Guangdong schools bow to the four corners of a house.⁵⁶¹⁶⁶ A Taiwanese-style drum score reproduced on a Jiangxi training site, of unclear provenance, lists its routines as walking drum, three salutes (行三禮), 請金禮, 敲四門 ("knocking the four gates"), then Seven Stars and the Eight Trigrams step, which puts the four-gate routine right after the three salutes.⁷¹ The bows documented above go to three directions, not four. Whether 拜四門 is a Hok San or Sar Ping salute, a Hong Kong term for the bows to a building's sides, or something else is unresolved here and needs a source from a Hok San or Sar Ping teacher.

Courtesy during a blessing

A Boston head maker adds two customs. A visiting troupe presents a red card saying who it is, and a store that accepts it gives a red packet.@ 07:47 If someone comes out with firecrackers the lion keeps dancing, with a livelier Seven-Star dance, until they finish, then bows and moves on.@ 09:10⁴ The blessing itself is in Chapter 10.

When two lions meet

Two lion teams meeting on the same ground was historically a risk. Teams were tied to kung fu schools, each village or hall had its territory, and the old saying 一山不藏二虎 (Mand. yī shān bù cáng èr hǔ, "one mountain cannot hide two tigers") is quoted in the blog. Discourtesy caused friction and sometimes fights.⁵² Open brawls are called 開片 (Cant. hoi1 pin2), and in Bao'an fights are recorded in which lion heads were trampled.²² Hong Kong now requires a police permit for any lion, dragon or qilin dance with martial arts in a public place, free and normally 14 working days, and an Indonesian forum article says clashes between clubs in the 1950s and 1960s led it to ban street lion dancing without one.⁷²³⁰

Practitioners describe a code for the encounter (會獅禮, Cant. wui6 si1 lai5, Mand. huìshī lǐ).

The six taboos

The 2017 blog lists six prohibitions for the moment two lions meet. Breaking them causes resentment or even fights with casualties.⁵²

Taboos and care of the lion

After the awakening the lion is treated as alive. The Boston head maker says the head must be treated with respect for the rest of its life, and the Hong Kong school notes call the head a sacred head (聖頭, Cant. sing3 tau4, Mand. shèngtóu), usually kept as the hall's treasure.⁴⁵⁷ No source lays out a complete rulebook, so each item below says who gives it.

Handling and touching

• Lifting. Lift by the internal frame, never by the eyes, horn, ears or other parts. The Foshan instructor calls this an ancestral taboo and kneels on one knee to do it.⁵³ The Boston head maker adds that the head should not be picked up by the ear or eyelid and should be put in a proper place.⁴
• Showing off. The opening voice of a Chinese-language profile of the Malaysian head maker Xiao Feihong says that kicking the head with the feet and picking it up to show off strength is impolite. The captions are machine-translated and the speaker is not named.@ 00:13⁸⁰
• What an audience may touch. The national inheritor Zhao Weibin says people may stroke the forehead, eyes, ears, nose, face and mouth for luck (great fortune, vigour, wisdom, wealth, blessings and good luck, in that order) but not the horn, the forehead mirror or the tail.⁸¹ A Kuala Lumpur troupe's FAQ also says not to touch the horn or mirror, since they fight evil spirits, not to jump over an unused lion's tail, and to avoid spanking or touching the rear.⁸²

Where the head rests

No source states a flat rule that the head must never touch the floor or that nobody may step over it. They give pieces of one. In the Foshan etiquette video the lion lies flat on the ground before it rises, so lying on the floor is not in itself a violation.⁵¹ The Shenzhen lineage says a head must not be placed casually, stepped on or insulted, and that stepping on another team's head is a provocation that typically leads to fights.²² Taken together, these suggest the rule is about casual or disrespectful placement, not floor contact as such.

Covering the eyes and storage

The only covering rules found concern the unconsecrated head, covered with red cloth until the rite (Lee) or wearing a red ribbon over the eyes (French practitioners).⁹²⁵ The Boston head maker says some keep the eyes of the Pixiu, the fiercest lion, covered near other heads.⁴ No source gives a general rule about covering a consecrated head in storage or which way a stored head should face. A rule of this kind from your own lineage is not contradicted by the sources.

Words

Some teams watch their speech. The Shenzhen article says the head is honorifically called the sacred head partly to avoid a homophone of 屍頭 (Cant. si1 tau4, "corpse head"). A Taiwan troupe head interviewed in 2005 says 獅頭 sounds like 輸頭 ("losing head") in Cantonese, so practitioners call it 勝頭 (sing3 tau4, "winning head").²²⁸⁴

Women and the head

This is where the traditional rule and modern practice differ most.

• The traditional rule. A Hong Kong open champion says the older generation held that girls must not touch a lion head, especially a consecrated one, as unlucky.⁸⁵ A founder of a Boston women's troupe says lion dance was traditionally forbidden to women as a sport because they were thought weak and undisciplined.⁸⁶ The Hong Kong school notes say women were barred.⁵⁷ A 2024 article on the same troupe says women were limited to cymbals or gongs and kept from touching the lion because of taboos about menstrual blood, and a South China Morning Post feature, seen only as a search-result summary, says consecrated costumes were holy items and women were seen as unclean in some Chinese religions.⁸⁷⁸⁸ David Lei says women were at one point banned.⁸⁹
• Modern practice. The Boston troupe, Gund Kwok (the name means "heroine" in Cantonese, probably 巾幗), was founded in 1998 and now has members aged 12 to 66; its site says women were sometimes not even allowed to touch lion heads.⁹⁰⁸⁷ The Hong Kong champion says her head weighs the same as the men's.⁸⁵

Retiring a lion: hanging it up or burning it

A worn-out lion is not thrown away. The Boston head maker says it is burned and sent back to heaven.⁴ The Shenzhen article says old heads are either hung up and treasured or cremated on a chosen day so that the lion returns to heaven, and an Indonesian culture forum says an old barongsai that "dies" traditionally has its head burned as a proper funeral.²²³⁰ The Surabaya team says old costumes were once burned and are now donated to schools.⁴⁴

A 2024 report from Canada gives the fullest account of a retirement. The Hong Luck Kung Fu Club of Toronto, founded in 1961 by Shifu Paul Chan, retired 10 lion heads in Pelham, Ontario. The heads were piled up and joss paper placed inside each. Members bowed and each placed three incense sticks, two new lions performed with drums and cymbals, and the heads were set alight. David Lieu said the joss paper is money for the lion's journey to heaven and that he thanked the lions for their service, and another member described the burning as letting go to make room for something new.⁹¹

White lions, mourning lions and funerals

A white or white-and-blue lion appears at funerals. It is the filial lion or mourning lion (孝獅, Cant. haau3 si1, Mand. xiàoshī; 喪獅, Cant. song1 si1) or the Ma Chao lion (馬超獅, Cant. maa5 ciu1 si1, Mand. Mǎ Chāo shī), after the Three Kingdoms general. A Kuala Lumpur troupe links its white to the mourning band Ma Chao wore.⁸² Sources agree it is used only at the funerals of respected seniors or prominent people, and the Shenzhen article adds that it is never used in daily shows or competitions.²²⁵⁷⁶

Two funerals described in the press

A Hong Kong report of 2018 describes a mourning lion at a funeral in a New Territories walled village. The drumming was slow, low and fading, the lion walked on its knees to the hall, and it followed the hearse up the hill while the team scattered paper money (溪錢, Cant. kai1 cin4). A 20-year-old dancer on the head knelt and kowtowed about 70 times. Mourning-lion work pays double wages and more lai see, and afterwards the lion and the team's clothes were burned on the hillside. The funeral of the Hung Gar master and film director Lau Kar-leung in 2013 had 12 mourning lions.⁹³

A 2017 Malaysian Chinese newspaper describes the first mourning lion danced by the Lek Min Tat Guan Sheng Temple dragon and lion team (利民達關聖宮龍獅團, Segamat district, Johor), on 16 February 2017 for the mother of its treasurer. Its consecration differs from an ordinary one: it is done between 11 am and 1 pm with the head facing out of the house, all members in white shirts and black trousers, pure water sprinkled with pomelo leaves, and a final bow to the earth gods of the five directions. Twelve memorial banners (奠旗, Cant. din6 kei4), six in front and six behind, accompany the lion. It walks ahead of the hearse to open the road, kowtows three times at every junction, circles the grave once and throws a handful of earth into the pit, and is then burned with the members' mourning items. It cost about RM8,300.²⁴

Why white is delicate

In Taiwan the word for white lion (白獅, Mand. bái shī) sounds like the word for a funeral, 白事 (bái shì, "white affair"), and in 2021 white lions hired in front of a police precinct were read as a mock funeral for a transferred police chief.⁹⁴ In Hong Kong on 14 September 2023, white and silver lions at the launch of the Night Vibes nightlife campaign drew mockery as holding a funeral like a celebration (喪事喜辦). The government said they were silver "fluorescent" lions with LED effects, and the lion-costume maker Hui Ka-hung told an HKU fact-check lab that a white costume does not necessarily mean a mourning lion, because snow lions are also white.⁹²⁹⁵

The rules at a glance

會獅: when two lions meet, step by step

The section "When two lions meet" covers the older accounts, the fights and the six taboos. This section adds a step-by-step account of the courteous meeting, 會獅 (Cant. wui6 si1, Mand. huìshī, "meeting of lions"). It comes from one widely shared explainer. Ray Petersen, who lists himself as Vice President of Education at the United States Dragon & Lion Dance Federation, shared it on Facebook, and a member posted the same article in the public "Chinese Lion Dancers" group.¹² The original author is not shown and the article cites no sources, so it is not a statement by the federation. Customs vary by region, lineage, school and local tradition, and the article itself says there is no single universal protocol. Treat what follows as a teaching outline to check against your own lineage.

The sequence

1. The drums settle. The percussion becomes calmer and more restrained. Fast or loud drumming can read as a challenge.¹²
2. A slow, low approach. The lions come toward each other slowly, with their heads relatively low.¹²
3. The greeting. In the group's copy the lions bow side to side (left, right, centre) with cheek-to-cheek nods, and then touch mouths in what the article calls a "handshake". Petersen's copy likens the greeting to a handshake and adds that a card or small banner is sometimes exchanged.¹²
4. The back-off. The lions back away in a low, graceful posture with the heads still low, and make some distance before they turn.¹²
5. Back to play. The heads come up and the lions return to lively play as the music changes.¹

Some of this matches the older accounts above. The mouth-to-mouth "handshake" and the exchange of a banner or card are in the Shenzhen account, the low approach is in the Boston account, and the bows in three directions are close to the three bows in the Shenzhen and Indonesian accounts. What the older accounts do not give is the calm drumming, the back-off before turning, and the return to play.

Faults to avoid

The explainer lists movements that read as dominance or a challenge. The table sets each one beside the six taboos above.¹²

The six taboos also ban blinking, stroking the beard and crouching with the head thrust up. The explainer, as read, does not mention those. It adds that, historically, a breach could cut the greeting short and sometimes lead to a confrontation between teams. It gives no example, so this is unverified.¹

會獅 is not 參拜

The explainer separates 會獅 from 參拜 (Cant. caam1 baai3, Mand. cānbài), the wider practice of paying respects to deities, altars, temples, teachers and hosts. Both use bows and ceremonial manners, but in 會獅 the other party is another lion or team. By this definition the bows to altars, doors and hosts covered elsewhere in this chapter belong to 參拜.¹²

A national routine built on the meeting

The Chinese Taipei Dragon and Lion Dance federation made the meeting its compulsory southern lion routine. Its video 中華舞龍舞獅運動總會-南獅會獅規定套路 @ 0:00 (5:15) has no captions, so only its description was read. The description says lion dance varies by region, era and culture, that a compulsory routine cannot cover every form, and that the federation picked the simple, interactive and fun meeting form so that learners get to know lion dance and later choose the form that suits them.³

The federation's 2015 rules for this routine, read from a scan, set it for groups of two, four or eight lions in a head-to-head arena. After an entrance, three bows to the front and a three-toss seven-star move, the set sequence for two lions has a section called 歡喜相逢 ("joyful meeting"). The lions circle and face each other, bow three times to each other, make probing advances, present the visiting card (拜帖) to the left, right and front with bow stances, retreat joyfully, and then play.⁴ In outline that is the explainer's order of approach, greeting, retreat and play, and it uses the card exchange that the Shenzhen account also describes. The video itself has not been described for this guide, so watch it to see what a judged version looks like.

New-lion activation steps in a video on Leroy Lee's channel

The video (醒獅)新獅子之啟用儀式步驟說明 @ 0:00 (2:10), "new lion activation ceremony, step by step", has burned-in Chinese captions on every step. As far as they could be read, they give the same five steps as the Foshan sequence above, in the same order.⁵

• Opening rule. A new lion's first performance needs 開光點睛, with incense burned and wine offered first (0:00). The rite should be led by a respected elder from a complete, harmonious family (0:06).
• Driving off evil, 辟邪. Paper money is moved around the lion on the ground and then burned in front of the shrine (0:31).
• Hanging red. The elder ties red strips onto the lion at the horn (0:46).
• Dotting, 點睛. A brush dipped in vermilion dots the lion part by part, with a short, auspicious chant at each dot (0:55). The captions name the dots as eyes, ears, nose, tongue, four legs and horn, then head to tail. The first dot could not be read.
• Wine cleansing, 酒淨 (Cant. zau2 zing6, Mand. jiǔ jìng). Pomelo leaves are used to sprinkle the lion's head, to sweep away the old, open a new chapter and awaken the lion (1:51).

The steps, their order, the elder with a complete family, the dot order and the purpose of the last step all match the Foshan tutorial described above. The clip also has the same running time (2:10), and its step times (0:31, 0:46, 0:55, 1:51) are within a few seconds of the Foshan video's (0:31, 0:46, 0:57, 1:55). It may be the same footage uploaded again. The sources do not say, so do not count it as a second, independent source. There is one small difference. The captions give the last step as 酒淨, "wine cleansing", where the Foshan sequence has 灑淨, "sprinkling clean", and it is unclear from them whether the water is wine or pomelo-leaf water. Check the clip before you teach either name.

Sources for this section

1. Ray Petersen's share of "Meeting of Lions" (會獅) - Facebook, English, shared explainer with no author or sources shown, read October 2026
2. Member's post of the same article in the "Chinese Lion Dancers" group - Facebook, English, public group post, read October 2026
3. 中華舞龍舞獅運動總會-南獅會獅規定套路 @ 0:00 - Chinese Taipei Dragon and Lion Dance federation channel (ctdlda), Chinese (traditional), video (5:15), title and description only
4. 2015 meeting-lions compulsory routine rules (舞獅（會獅規定套路）競賽規則, dated 17 December 2015) - Chinese Taipei Dragon and Lion Dance federation, Chinese (traditional), rule PDF scan read visually
5. (醒獅)新獅子之啟用儀式步驟說明 @ 0:00 - Leroy Lee, Los Angeles area, Chinese, video (2:10), burned-in subtitles read in part and paraphrased

Unwritten rules (規矩): one teacher's list

This section draws on a kung fu teacher's Facebook post shared in October 2026, based on notes from the early 2000s. The post lists 21 unwritten rules for southern lion dance, gives guidance on red envelopes, and sets out the titles used inside a kung fu family.¹ Unwritten rules of proper conduct are called 規矩 (Cant. gwai1 geoi2, Mand. guījǔ). What follows comes from two passages pasted from the post, not from the page itself, and the pasted copy does not name the author.

The post says that in Cantonese southern lion culture tied to kung fu schools, the lion is not a costume. It is a living symbol of spirit (靈, Cant. ling4, Mand. líng), luck and lineage, and that is why so many unwritten rules surround it. Its author says the rules come from early-2000s notes and from experienced practitioners, and that they can differ between schools, countries and regions. Read the list as one experienced practitioner's view, not a universal code.

The rest of this chapter has to build its picture from many sources, and it says that no source gives a complete rulebook. This post is the nearest thing to one, and it states flatly several rules that other sources only hint at. The tables below keep the post's own numbering, so you can set them beside the original, and set each rule against what the chapter already says.

For the team (rules 1 to 10)

These rules cover the people who dance, drum and look after the lion.¹

For the audience (rules 11 to 21)

These rules are for people watching, hosts and passers-by.¹ The post sums up the audience's side in one line: "Let the lion come to you, never invade the lion's space."

Money and offerings

The post also gives guidance on money, which the chapter's sources do not cover from the audience's side.¹ This chapter and Chapter 10 describe the host's red packet tied into the lettuce, the red packet on the altar tray and the red card a visiting troupe presents. The post answers a different question: what a person in the crowd should do.

• The traditional form. Money goes in a red envelope (利是, Cant. lai6 si6, Mand. lìshì, also 紅包, Cant. hung4 baau1, Mand. hóngbāo). The post reads red as luck, prosperity, respect and blessing, and calls the gift a fortune exchange, not a payment.
• Loose bills. The post says that in the United States, Canada and Europe loose bills are commonly accepted and not offensive if given respectfully. Some traditional sifus see them as informal, closer to a tip, especially at temple performances, grand openings and ancestral ceremonies.
• How to give a bill. Hold it out toward the lion's mouth and let the lion take it. Never throw it, wave it teasingly, push it into the mouth or eyes, or put it on the ground.
• The better gift. Give lettuce, an orange and a red envelope (or cash) together. The lion takes the gift and gives blessings back.
• Ask. The post ends this advice by telling readers to consult their sifu.

Kung fu family titles

The same post lists the titles used inside a kung fu family, once in a Cantonese list and once in a separate Mandarin list.¹ The idea behind them is that the teacher is a kind of parent (the post glosses 師父 as master or teaching father), fellow students are brothers and sisters, the teacher's fellow students are uncles and aunts, and the teacher's own teacher is a grandparent. Most titles begin with 師 (Cant. si1, Mand. shī, teacher) or 徒 (Cant. tou4, Mand. tú, apprentice).

The table follows the post's Cantonese list in the post's order, with the post's spellings and English glosses. Characters are traditional, with simplified after a slash where they differ. The post's Cantonese spelling is not the Jyutping used elsewhere in this guide. For example, its Si Fu is si1 fu2 and its Si Hing is si1 hing1. A dagger (†) marks a title that the post's Mandarin list does not include, so its pinyin is the standard reading of the characters and was added for this guide.

The post's Mandarin list has further titles with no Cantonese counterpart in the post. The post gives Mandarin pinyin for these and no Cantonese reading.

Sources for this section

1. Kung fu teacher's Facebook post on unwritten lion dance rules, red-envelope guidance and kung fu family titles - Facebook, English with Chinese terms, author not named in the pasted copy, shared in October 2026 and based on early-2000s notes. Read from two pasted passages (the family titles, and a summary of the 21 rules with money guidance); the page itself was not opened.