The blessing and choi cheng

Plucking the green is the reason a southern lion knocks on a door. A shop, a family, a temple or an association hangs out a bundle of lettuce with a red packet tied inside; the lion arrives, bows, blesses the place, works out how to reach the prize, eats it, and gives the leaves back as luck. Everything else in this chapter hangs off that exchange: the order of a blessing visit, the reasons each object is chosen, the story the lion acts out, the scrolls it unrolls, the puzzles (cheng arrays) hosts set, the fights those puzzles once caused, and the competitions in Hong Kong that keep the old puzzles alive. Etiquette that applies to every outing, such as eye-dotting and meeting another lion, is in Chapter 9; the drum patterns named here are explained in Chapter 7 and, for Sar Ping, in Chapter 5; the movements are in Chapter 8.

What "the green" means

The ritual is called 採青 (simplified 采青; Cant. choi2 ceng1, Mand. cǎiqīng), "plucking the green". English spellings are many: choi cheng, choy cheng, choy chang, choi chiang, choi chan. The green itself is 青 (Cant. ceng1, "cheng"; Mand. qīng). Practitioners use the word in two senses. In the narrow sense the green is the gift: lettuce tied to a red packet 利是 (Cant. lai6 si6, "lai see"; Mand. lìshì), often with mandarin oranges. In the broad sense it is the whole array or routine the lion must read and crack, the 青陣 (Cant. ceng1 zan6, Mand. qīngzhèn), "cheng array" ^{1, 2}. Xie Zhongyuan of Foshan University puts the first sense bluntly: "the green is the lucky money" (「青」就是「利是」) ³.

Cantonese Wikipedia distinguishes two physical kinds: 菜青 (Cant. coi3 ceng1), the tied lettuce, and 旗青 (Cant. kei4 ceng1), a flag with auspicious phrases written on it ⁴. Chinese Wikipedia says that from the late Qing, plucking the green was a required item whenever a South China shop opened or the New Year was celebrated, and that carrying the lettuce into the shop stands for business thriving from the day it opens ⁵. Hong Kong's intangible heritage inventory defines it as the lion eating lettuce hung in mid-air, with a red packet attached ⁶. In the United States the green is often read as the colour of money; MIT's club notes that this is an American reading and the real meaning is a pun ⁷, explained in the next sections. Vietnamese sources call the act hái lộc ("picking luck") and say the lion "eats" (ăn) or "snatches" (ngoạm) the money ⁸; Malaysia's 2025 heritage register calls it "eating green vegetables" ⁹.

"Cai qing is a contest of wits and strength." 「采青是一個鬥智鬥力的遊戲」

Speaker at the launch of 《香港獅藝傳奇》, Hong Kong ¹⁰

The blessing visit, step by step

Descriptions of a blessing visit survive from Guangdong villages, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Vancouver and Boston. They agree on the core and differ on details, and one Guangdong practitioner blog opens its account by saying "every master has his own method" (各師各法) ¹¹. The sequence below reconciles the detailed accounts. Where a step has a regional variant it is noted in the step; the larger disagreements follow in callouts.

1. Before setting out. A new lion must be dotted and awakened first (點睛, Cant. dim2 zing1, Mand. diǎnjīng; see Chapter 9). At a Guangzhou company opening the dotter is a respected guest who usually makes six dots for 六六大順 ("six-six, everything smooth") and then tips the lion a red packet ¹². Traditional teams open with their school's own fist salute, the 拳禮 (Cant. kyun4 lai5, Mand. quánlǐ), "what traditional lion activity values most"; each school's salute is different ^{13, 14}. Guangdong and Shenzhen accounts call this opening burst of southern fist with drums 開樁 (Cant. hoi1 zong1, Mand. kāizhuāng) ^{15, 16}. In Boston, lion maker Ken Morin says each troupe first presents "a proper card in red" saying who they are; a store that accepts takes the card and returns a red packet as the donation for the performance Ken Morin, Boston Chinatown @ 07:47 ¹⁷. In old Pearl River Delta villages, teams received a New Year visiting invitation (拜年請柬) on the 29th of the twelfth month and handed it in at the host village's ancestral hall as a sign-in ¹⁸.
2. Arrival. The drum announces the lion. On New Year village rounds in Shenzhen, team members light firecrackers and throw them to the roadside as they go, which villagers explain as scaring off the Nian beast and showing the dancers' courage ¹⁵. At the host's ground, usually the village gate, the Shenzhen lion performs 擦角 (Cant. caat3 gok3, "horn rubbing") and kowtows ¹⁵. Teams plan a one-way route: "lions only travel one way and never retrace their route" (醒獅從來都只有單行線，不走回頭路), partly so that rival single-horned male lions do not meet ¹⁸.
3. Three bows at the door. The lion gives the host or the gods three bows, 三拜 (Cant. saam1 baai3, Mand. sānbài). The Hong Kong school notes describe it precisely: bow left, right, then centre; advance about five steps, retreat about five, sink into a level horse stance (四平馬), open the lion's mouth and raise the head to left, right and centre ¹⁹. In Singapore the lion bows three times to the audience, or at ancestral rites, clan halls and temples first to the ancestors and gods ²⁰. Vietnamese opening scripts have the lion make tam bái: to heaven and earth for good weather, to the ancestors, and to the householder for prosperity, directed by the earth-god figure Ông Địa ²¹, who also bows to the elders and the householder before anything else happens ⁸. Hok San drummers call the matching rhythm "Xing Li" or "San Bai" (three bows): three clicks, three single beats and three rolls, with cymbals and gong playing only on the three beats Hok San 3 bows lesson @ 01:21 ²². Boston's Gund Kwok describes the storefront version simply: "the drum thuds and we bow to the store" ²³.
4. Testing the threshold. Before going in, the lion probes the doorway. The Guangdong doorway-green account has it bite the left and right door-frame edges and the middle of the threshold, then start the seven-star drum (七星鼓, Cant. cat1 sing1 gu2, Mand. qīxīng gǔ) and jump over the threshold "because traditional big houses have high thresholds" ¹¹. The Hong Kong notes call this "testing the door edge" (試門邊, Cant. si3 mun4 bin1) with the seven-star drum ¹⁹. At an ancestral hall the lion enters from the right, probing the door (探門), biting the door edge (咬門邊), rubbing the door (擦門) and circling the pillars (纏柱), right side then left ¹⁸. A California heritage group lists "testing the door opening" among the lion's basic courtesies ²⁴.
5. Bowing at every shrine. Inside, the lion bows first to the deity positions (先拜神位) before doing anything else, and must also do so before plucking any green ²⁵. The usual shrines are the God of Wealth (財神, Cant. coi4 san4), very often in the form of Guan Di (關帝), whose image a Guangzhou company places facing the door both to draw wealth in and to guard against evil ¹²; the earth god (土地, Cant. tou2 dei6), whom Vietnamese troupes honour as Ông Địa with the instruction Lân lạy bàn thờ ông Địa ("the lion bows at the Ông Địa altar") ²⁶; and the ancestors, before whose tablets the lion in an ancestral hall performs three kneelings and nine kowtows "like descendants kneeling to ancestors" ¹⁸. The Hong Kong school notes add a rule for inside the building: no seven-star drum and no kicking, only the three-star drum (三星鼓) and the rolling drum (擂鼓, Cant. leoi4 gu2) with kneeling bows ¹⁹.
6. Blessing the space. Some hosts ask the lion to walk every room; otherwise it circles once. Some schools and places bow to the four corners of the house (拜房屋四角), others do not ¹¹. At a business, the lion dances through every office area, which Guangzhou calls 旺場 (Cant. wong6 coeng4, Mand. wàngchǎng), "making the premises prosper" ¹²; Vietnamese troupes call it xông đất, first-footing the premises ²⁶. Vancouver's Chau Luen team blessed more than 25 businesses on one street, entering to visit each office ²⁷. Inside Boston shops the lion blinks at children, sniffs a hotpot and paws at food ²³.
7. Backing out. The lion leaves tail first and head last, without turning round ¹¹; in the Shenzhen wording it "must walk out backwards, tail first, never pointing its rear at the host" (必须倒退着走，狮尾先出，不会用尾部对着主人家) ¹⁵. At an ancestral hall it backs out on bent knees by the left side, and "must never turn round to leave" ¹⁸.
8. The green. By now a green is usually hanging at the door. The lion sees it, is startled, tests it three times, plucks it in one go, chews, removes the red packet, and spits or throws the leaves to the host and crowd. The full sequence is in the script section below.
9. Orange, scroll and characters. In Shenzhen the lion hands the mandarin orange, which locals simply call 大吉 (Cant. daai6 gat1, "big luck"), to the host or places it on the god shrine ¹⁵. Many teams then unroll a scroll or arrange oranges and leaves into lucky words; see scrolls and characters.
10. Firecrackers. The host hangs and lights a string of firecrackers (炮仗, Cant. paau3 zoeng2). While it burns the lion performs the high lion, 起高獅 ¹¹, or follows the ever-shortening string as it burns, showing playfulness and bravery ¹⁵. Ken Morin's Boston rule is the same: if the store owner comes out with firecrackers, keep dancing, livelier and louder, with seven stars, until they are all done, then bow and move on ¹⁷.
11. Thanks and leaving. When the firecrackers finish, the drum stops and the lion gives three bows of thanks to the host's door ¹¹, then walks out backwards and bows again ¹⁵. In Vietnam the lion nods its head in thanks after taking the money, and Ông Địa bows his thanks before the troupe moves on ⁸. After a puzzle cheng, Chris Low says the team presents the person who set it with "a small token, a small banner, maybe a group's calling card" before the three closing bows Snake Impeding the Path demonstration @ 09:20 ²⁸.

The order is not fixed. A Singapore commercial troupe offers openings as ribbon-cutting, premise blessing, cai qing, then photographs, and notes that many clients put the cai qing before the premise blessing ²⁹. The Guangzhou company opening ran flower baskets, incense and worship of the God of Wealth at the auspicious hour, ribbon-cutting, champagne, eye-dotting, the green hung high on the door lintel, a red banner, the spat green caught by the boss, and only then the lion dancing through every office ¹². A Taishan village celebration on 14 March 2026 ran ribbon-cutting, red envelopes for the elderly, honours, a group photo, then the lion's cai qing, a lion and martial-arts show and a banquet ³⁰.

Vietnamese households hang greens and red paper to welcome Ông Địa and the lion, who "bring down blessings wherever they go"; the well-off once tied prize money in red cloth with a cabbage or a bunch of greens ^{8, 34}. A provincial paper describes a house visit as an opening bow to the household deity, festive dancing, then gathering luck by jumping for hung envelopes or climbing for rewards ³⁵, and a national paper calls the moment the lion climbs to "eat" money hung high the most festive and suspenseful moment of the dance, adding that the lân is vegetarian ³⁶. Vietnamese sources describe Ông Địa walking in front "as if dispelling bad things" and lying on his back, rubbing his belly, while he speaks blessings to the host ³⁷; see Chapter 12. In Boston the green is a street event as much as a doorway one: at the 2025 parade lettuce was kicked into the crowd ³⁸, at the 2026 parade lions caught lettuce and tossed oranges amid firecrackers at businesses ³⁹, and the August Moon Festival opens its stage show with a lion choi cheng and oranges thrown to the crowd ⁴⁰.

Different occasions, different greens

The same Guangdong practitioner blog that describes the ancestral-hall visit gives a protocol for each kind of booking ¹⁸, and team blogs from Vancouver add the North American versions.

Funerals are the exception. The white mourning lion (孝獅) keeps its head low and kneel-walks to the hall ⁵; it is a farewell, not a blessing, and is covered in Chapter 9.

Why each thing is blessed

Exorcism and the door-to-door round

Scholars root the blessing visit in exorcism. Li Guotao of Sun Yat-sen University writes that southern lions "go street to street, house to house, bowing, congratulating and plucking greens, to obtain money and good-luck tokens", a custom inherited from the ancient 儺 (Cant. no4, Mand. nuó) rites of expelling pestilence, which also went from door to door begging food and wine; northern lions lost this function and southern lions kept it ⁵¹. Xie Zhongyuan describes cai qing as a mixture of older customs: door-to-door expulsion of pestilence (沿門逐疫), stealing greens to pray for sons (偷青祈丁), and picking greens for luck (採青求吉). At the start of spring people ate spring cakes and raw lettuce; before the mid-Ming, Guangdong held lettuce fairs (生菜會) that meant "seeking vitality" (求生氣); and after the Qing the green absorbed the worship of Guan Gong and Guanyin, adding wealth and sons to its meanings ²⁵. The lettuce fair survives: in Guangzhou, Nanhai and Shunde it falls on the 26th of the first lunar month, when Guanyin "opens the treasury"; people sit on the ground eating lettuce wraps, with lettuce for wealth, vermicelli for long life and pickled greens for descendants, and lion dances are part of the day. It is over 300 years old, declined in the 1950s and revived in the 1980s ⁵².

Practitioners in North America say the same thing more plainly. Ken Morin calls lion dance "a blessing to drive away everything bad and bring everything good in" ¹⁷; a Gund Kwok member, Tan, told Boston.com at the 2026 Chinatown parade, "The significance of the lion dance is to chase away all bad" ³⁹; Cleveland's Kwan family says the drums and cymbals are loud "because that scares away bad luck and evil spirits" and makes room for good ones Kwan Family awakening @ 01:11 ⁵³.

Noise, fire and red

The popular explanation for drums, firecrackers and red is the Nian (年獸), a beast afraid of noise, fire and the colour red ^{54, 17}. English Wikipedia notes that the earliest written sources describing the Nian as a creature date only to the early twentieth century ⁵⁵. Shenzhen villagers add practical reasons: dancers used to advance straight into long strings of exploding firecrackers to show courage, the sulphur was believed to disinfect, and the smoke expressed the wish to drive away disease ¹⁵. Red envelopes carry the same logic: red is said to ward off evil spirits, the New Year money 壓歲錢 is said to come from the homophone 壓祟錢, "money to suppress evil spirits", and red packets are the normal way to pay lion dancers ^{54, 56}. The mirror on the lion's forehead reflects negative energy ⁵⁷; Guangzhou inheritor Zhao Weibin likens it to a feng shui bagua mirror and, with the horn and the tail, lists it among the parts nobody should touch ⁵⁸. A Saigon shop owner summed up the noise in 2026: "Without sound, there's no luck" ⁵⁹.

The puns

The objects in a green are chosen because their names sound like wishes. Lettuce, 生菜 (Cant. saang1 choi3, Mand. shēngcài), sounds like 生財 (Cant. saang1 coi4, Mand. shēngcái), "make wealth" ^{14, 5}. Chinese Wikipedia adds that it also suggests 生彩 and 生猛 (lively, vigorous) ⁵, and a 2019 primer says lettuce is hung for the omen 「生生猛猛」 ². Lettuce also shreds well, which a Vancouver team gives as a practical reason to prefer it ³¹.

Vietnamese troupes extend the number puns to the opening drum: eight strokes for Bát (prosperity, phát tài), nine for eternity, thirteen for the thirteen generals of Prince Lý Khắc Dụng, and eighteen for the eighteen Arhats ⁶⁴.

Placement and direction

None of the sources read sets out a formal feng shui doctrine for the green, but several placement customs carry the same logic of drawing fortune into a building. The Guan Di image faces the door both to pull wealth in and to guard the entrance ¹². Vancouver's Chau Luen often hang greens near the cash register ³¹. Carrying the lettuce into the shop means business thriving from the opening day ⁵. The spat leaves go out in every direction: left, right, then centre, "to spread prosperity in all directions" ²⁴, or to the four directions so that wealth sprouts everywhere, 遍地生財 (Cant. pin3 dei6 saang1 coi4, Mand. biàndì shēngcái) ¹⁵. In the snake cheng the lion rolls the snake's tangerine eyes toward the business, "taking a piece of the poison and turning it into prosperity" Snake demonstration @ 06:27 ²⁸. Lions at an opening line up in a trapezoid for wealth from eight directions ¹⁸.

Why businesses pay

The blessing is an exchange. The host's red packet pays the troupe and the troupe gives luck back as leaves, an orange, a scroll. George Kwan puts it from the family's side: "in order for the lion to give you good fortune we give a lion good fortune from our family" Kwan Family awakening @ 06:23 ⁵³. A host who receives the spat green is receiving fortune ²; the Guangzhou boss caught it, "received the blessing" and tipped a red packet ¹²; and Chau Luen tells clients that "if you're hit with the lettuce, you'll be blessed with plenty of wealth in the coming year" ⁶⁶. In Boston, Ken Morin adds that catching a piece is lucky, but "even if you don't get a piece of lettuce or an orange, you also always get the blessing" ¹⁷.

The puzzle chengs give a second reason. Each of the "five poisons" stands for "something that is blocking your business, something that's killing your business", and defeating it on the doorstep symbolises overcoming that obstacle Snake demonstration @ 01:40 ²⁸. Pauline Loh's book on Singapore describes the ground green as a puzzle the lion solves, symbolic at inaugurations because "it removes obstacles that may hamper the growth of a business" ⁶⁷.

The money matters to troupes. In west Guangdong the reward envelope hung with the green (賞封, Cant. soeng2 fung1) runs from 20 to 1,000 yuan in villages, over 10,000 yuan in cities, and up to 100,000 yuan from large enterprises; the same 2008 study records criticism that some teams cut their routines and martial sets for small envelopes, behaving like "aggressive beggars" (大種乞丐) ⁶⁸. Lee Kok Leong reports that cai qing is Singapore troupes' main income, with some earning S$30,000 to 40,000 at New Year ²⁰, and Loh says New Year commissions finance troupes for the year ⁶⁷. Saigon troupes charged 3 million to over 20 million dong for a Tết booking in 2026 ⁵⁹. Height is the usual price signal: in Vancouver a higher green means a bigger envelope ³¹, and Vietnamese Wikipedia says "usually the bigger the reward, the higher it hangs", with skilled teams welcoming high rewards as a challenge to rivals and an advertisement to other households. Where elderly people live, though, the reward is hung low even if it is large, to spare the lion danger, and the host "stores up merit" (để phước) ⁸. Oranges and a red packet can also be an apology: Wong Kiew Kit recounts that in Malaysia they were given as a formal apology between lion groups ⁶⁹.

The script, part one: the dramatic arc

A traditional green is a play without words. David Lei calls lion dance "opera without speaking", a pantomime ⁶³, and the 2026 Science and Technology Daily feature describes cai qing as having a full 起承轉合 (Cant. hei2 sing4 zyun2 hap6, Mand. qǐ chéng zhuǎn hé) structure: opening, development, turn and resolution ⁷⁰. A Guangdong practitioner blog makes it a rule:

"Every lion set, whether breaking or plucking the green, must be a complete routine that tells a complete story." 「一套醒狮动作，无论破青或者采青，都必须要有一个完整的套路……演绎一个完整的故事」

醒狮文化传承 blog, Sina ¹³

The beats below are the ones teachers name most often, in their usual order. Not every performance uses all of them; Guangzhou inheritor Zhao Weibin says performers choose among them according to the time available ¹⁴.

Teachers name the beats differently. The lists below are teaching lists, not a fixed liturgy; they zoom in and out on the same story.

The script also prescribes emotions for each scene. The Guangdong blog lists sloth on waking, suspicion when probing the cave, a raised head when climbing a mountain, alarm at its own reflection when crossing a bridge, joy when playing in water, greed when eating, dejection when spitting, and caution when spitting the ball under the moon ¹³. Its companion post sets out "lion nature" (獅性, Cant. si1 sing3): suspicious of every object, happy on seeing green, startled by red, playful with water, biting pillars, pulling at wood, testing steps and ladders with foot and head before climbing ⁷³. Yao Chaowen credits this list, and the eight emotions, to the Hok San master Feng Gengchang (馮庚長), who studied kittens to build the lion's character; see Chapter 5 ⁵⁰.

Skipping the story is a fault with a name. A lion that dances a few casual moves and grabs the red packet is mocked as 擒青 (Cant. kam4 ceng1, "grabbing the green"), now Cantonese slang for being over-hasty ⁷⁸.

Who leads, drum or lion

Most of a lion dance follows the drum, but plucking the green is the exception in Colin McGuire's fieldwork at Toronto's Hong Luck club: the band plays a continuous roll with small crescendos as the lion approaches, marks the first snap of the mouth with a single accent, and then the musicians "wait for a cue from the lion" before the spitting rhythms. The whole street routine lasted about a minute, a quarter of it eating ⁸³. A California heritage group gives the order 3-star, then 7-star, then high dance, and says that after testing the green on both sides the lion does a 3-star routine "to ward off any others" ²⁴. Coaches teaching Sar Ping drumming will recognise the story in the names of the eighteen-route patterns: titles from a Los Angeles teacher's series include 三敬禮 (three salutes), 菊花頭起獅 (raising the lion), 探步 (probing step), 上登山 (climbing the mountain), 照水影 (looking at the reflection) and 戲水 (playing in water) ^{84, 85}. Only those titles are known; the patterns themselves are in Chapter 5 and Chapter 7.

Length varies with the setting. The Hong Kong school drill takes 5 to 8 minutes ¹⁹; Singapore shows run about 15 minutes ²⁰; Penang master Divino Kok says the old full sequence of awakening, looking for the green, discovering it and returning "used to take about an hour" ⁸⁶.

The script, part two: scrolls, couplets and characters

The second script is written. After taking the green, many lions pounce on a rolled scroll lying on the ground and unroll it with a drum roll. Vancouver's Chau Luen describe scrolls about 5 to 6 feet long (human height), once hand-painted on paper or silk and now dye-printed cloth, with wooden dowels top and bottom, kept rolled with string, ribbon or velcro and "discreetly placed on the ground". After the drum roll the lion drops or unrolls the scroll, turns so the audience can read it, and presents it to the guest of honour: the couple at a wedding, the owner at an opening; usually two scrolls follow a business choy cheng ^{87, 31}. MIT's club uses scrolls "when spraying lettuce is inappropriate" ⁷. Older forms are spat rather than unrolled: before entering an ancestral hall some Guangdong lions slowly spit out a red paper strip reading 恭賀新春 ¹⁸; at the Guangzhou opening the lion opened a red banner reading 生意興隆，財源廣進 that was picked with the green ¹²; and Vietnamese lions "spit out a pair of couplets to return the luck" (nhả ra đôi câu đối trả lộc) ²¹. The flag green 旗青 carries its phrases on a flag ⁴.

Characters spelled with leaves and peel

Some lions write with their food. The practice is well attested; the specific characters are not.

Characters such as 大吉, 福 or 一本萬利 are often said to be spelled this way, but none of the sources read documents a specific character; that remains unresolved.

Cheng arrays 青陣

A cheng array is a puzzle a host builds and a lion solves. Xie Zhongyuan describes programmatic greens that use "common benches, basins, ladders, lettuce and clay pots to set up virtual mountains, ridges, cliffs, streams, caves, rivers and bridges" ²⁵. In west Guangdong such layouts are called 圖陣 (Cant. tou4 zan6, Mand. túzhèn): the layout of skills and walking route the host pre-sets according to his own purpose. Each has a fixed, publicly recognised set-up, solution and meaning; a local booklet, 《舞獅圖式一百零八》 ("108 lion-dance array diagrams"), collects them; some require a matching kung fu set before the green can be taken; and watching a lion break an array (破陣) is "like a life-and-death fight between animals" ⁶⁸. Heshan's official media claim 108 cheng arrays for Hok San lion, naming the ground green, high green, under-the-bridge green, crab green, carp green, scooping the moon from the bottom of the well (井底撈月青) and gold coins hanging the hibiscus (金錢吊芙蓉青) ⁹³. In San Francisco, Corey Chan has documented about 800 chengs David Lei @ 34:35 ⁶³. Hong Kong notes add that set-ups differ by trade ¹⁹.

The props are the script. Chris Low explains that "the old routines are actually stories taken from Chinese culture, from folklore, from history, from the religious beliefs", and that any trained lion dancer "would come across this setup and know exactly what the story was and how to solve" it Snake demonstration @ 01:16 ²⁸. Ken Morin says there are "hundreds of choy changs for all kinds of things", but "in the US most of the time you just see oranges and lettuce" ¹⁷.

Ground, middle and high

The 2026 Science and Technology Daily traces the line from the ground lion through bench lion, high-table lion and high-pole lion to today's pole lion, and reports teams of nine building a three-tier human ladder to pluck a green 10 m up. It credits Wong Fei-hung with three techniques: the flying-weight green (飛鉈採青, a weighted rope dart shot from the lion's mouth to snag a green four storeys high), the bamboo-ladder green (竹梯青) and the crab green ⁷⁰; a Nanhai heritage page repeats the same three ¹⁶. Treat these attributions as lore.

Four families of names

The common chengs

A "half-moon" cheng was not found in the sources read; half-moon appears only as a formation of lions behind guests at a groundbreaking ¹⁸, and the moon chengs found are the seven- and three-star versions, scooping the moon from the water or the well, and the heavenly dog eating the moon.

Solving the snake

The snake cheng, "Poisonous Snake Blocks the Road" (毒蛇攔路), is "one of the oldest lion dance routines" and one of the most common, according to Chris Low, narrating while Yogi Tam performs it ²⁸. Sifu Wong Tat Mau teaches the same cheng as "Lion Eats the Snake", with the spear as the snake's body, the butterfly knife as its teeth, oranges as eyes, lettuce as food and red paper as the lai see Lion Eats the Snake @ 00:04 ⁷⁷; his teacher's VHS series included it as "Dance #3 Lion Eating the Snake" ⁹⁹.

1. Read the set-up. Not every snake is an enemy. "If a snake is set up to represent the Chinese zodiac sign, the year of the snake, you obviously don't want to kill that, you'll be killing your luck for the whole year" Snake demonstration @ 02:12 ²⁸.
2. Startle and retreat. On first meeting the snake the lion is startled, recognises danger, and circles to safety behind the snake, out of striking distance ²⁸.
3. Three tests. Left, right, then straight down the centre, the last being the attack; each ends in a seven-star movement and a pause, and each move is a transition between stances (horse, bow-and-arrow, cat) @ 04:00 ²⁸.
4. Pin it. On the third test head and tail both jump onto the snake's body to immobilise it; otherwise "the snake can rise around and bite the lion", meaning the lion dies. Never turn your back to the snake @ 05:35 ²⁸.
5. Blind it. The lion takes the tangerine eyes and rolls them toward the business, turning poison into prosperity, a principle Chris Low compares to a flu shot @ 06:27 ²⁸. Wong Tat Mau also eats the eyes first, one side then the other ⁷⁷.
6. Take the fangs. The butterfly knives come next; some groups take the fangs first to neutralise the biggest threat ²⁸. In the old performance the dancer stops, comes out of the lion and performs a butterfly-knife form Lion Eats the Snake @ 05:52 ⁷⁷, or passes the knives to a teammate, or performs the set afterwards ²⁸.
7. Kill and swallow. The snake is still alive, only blind, so the lion struggles with it, whacks it on the ground and swallows it ²⁸. Wong Tat Mau's rule: "eat from the top from the head, don't eat from the tail otherwise the snake will turn around to bite you" @ 07:08 ⁷⁷. The spear can prompt a second weapon set, spear against butterfly knives ²⁸.
8. The lettuce. The lion still stalks and tests the lettuce three times ("is this good to eat, is this poison, is this a trap"), then eats and spits it, "the blessing raining down on the business" @ 08:20 ²⁸.
9. Close. Happy lion, beard and mouth wiped, a token for the person who set the cheng, three closing bows ^{28, 77}.

Solving the crab

The crab cheng tests strategy rather than strength. The lion observes the array (觀陣), tests it (試陣), removes the legs and pincers one by one, then charges (闖陣), dismantling the body to take the green. The rule: "traditional lions must dismantle the crab starting from the rear, to avoid its attack" (傳統醒獅采青拆蟹一定要從蟹後面開始拆，避開蟹的攻擊) ². A Shenzhen blogger describes a "tiger crab" (老虎蟹) that the lion circles left and right until it finds the weak point, winning by wit, not force ⁹⁵. The older Foshan form used a live crab in a basin beside the leaves; the lion had to bite off the shell and claws one by one before plucking, and it was rare because it was so difficult ⁵⁰. The crab is still a set cheng in Hong Kong ground-green contests ¹⁰¹, and a Shenzhen team scored 8.91 with it in Macau's 2022 youth traditional contest ⁹⁸.

Water, bridge and mountain

The water basin is the lion's chance to play: it is startled by its reflection, jumps on the rim and picks up coins with its toes before taking the green ². The older Foshan list adds stooping to pluck the green from river water (俯採河水之青) ⁵⁰. Bridges and mountains are built from benches and tables. In the full Foshan show "the lion ascends the tower" (獅子上樓台), performed at a martial hall's open-stage celebration (開盤) after it won a pennant, the lion leaves the cave, descends the mountain, crosses the bridge, drinks the water and plucks the green; a wooden table served as the mountain, and two lions might meet while patrolling it (巡山會獅) ⁵⁰.

The old challenge culture

A cheng used to be a public test of a kung fu school. Masters judged a disciple's kung fu by his lion stances, and the saying was "learn kung fu first, then lion" ¹³. The Hong Kong school notes add that dancers once had to reach assistant-instructor level in the school, and that women were barred; now anyone can dance ¹⁹. Foshan's martial halls each had a lion society, and Yao Chaowen records that the halls affiliated with 興義堂 (the "義" faction) played the three-star drum while those affiliated with 悅安社 (the "社" faction) played the seven-star drum; Leung Jan's Wing Chun hall had no lion club ⁵⁰. Rural lions relied on boxing clubs in clan ancestral halls ²⁵. In west Guangdong, some arrays still demand a kung fu set before the green can be taken ⁶⁸.

Rivalry ran through the lion colours. A Plum Blossom federation page says two black lions from rival schools meeting often meant a fight ⁹⁴. A Scottish school's page says the black Zhang Fei "fighting lion" was used by new schools or those seeking a challenge, the Liu Bei lion by established schools, and that when several schools reached the same lettuce "the lions must fight a duel"; the Zhang Fei lion wears one coin on its collar, Guan Yu two, Liu Bei three ¹⁰². Christopher Tan's video description says lettuce was once hung 15 to 20 feet up and that lions from several schools reaching it together fought "with stylistic lion moves" ⁸⁸. In Shenzhen, poor etiquette when two lions met could bring ridicule or a gang fight (開片), and in Bao'an lion heads were trampled ¹⁵. In Malaysia, Wong Kiew Kit names Kuala Lumpur's rival lion authorities as Soon Tuck Wooi Koon (Fatt San) and Cap For Hong (Hok San) ⁶⁹. Singapore's Lee Kok Leong notes that secret societies "summoned by the Hung Mun" had their own rules for bowing to the green ²⁰.

Hong Kong films made the cheng contest a staple of school rivalry: Rivals of Kung Fu (1974) ends with a 20-minute lion contest at a Guanyin festival; The Young Master (1980) pits two schools over lettuce-filled buckets and platforms; Dreadnaught (1981) has a bench obstacle course with Kwan Tak-hing as Wong Fei-hung; Lion vs Lion (1981); Martial Club (1981) opens with 13 minutes of lion dance; and Once Upon a Time in China III (1993) ¹⁰³.

Hong Kong traditional cheng competitions

The old puzzle chengs now live mainly in Hong Kong's "traditional lion arts" (傳統獅藝) contests, which run in two kinds of division: a set-cheng division in which every team solves the same array, and an own-apparatus division in which each team builds its own array and gives it a poetic name (參賽名稱, entry name). The record below comes from video titles and descriptions on a channel that films Hong Kong traditional events ¹⁰¹; the organiser of the 四海同心 series and the written rules of the divisions were not found.

The chengs on the HK Drumming playlist

The "HK Drumming" playlist is built from these contests: two 2018 contest videos (the champion 郭偉康體育總會孔元臻龍獅團 B team and 香港獅), 桃園結義, the 2017 洪熙官紀念盃 entry, 香港獅 at the 2019 荃城盃, 濟眾堂杯 and 雄獅樓盃, a Guangzhou team at the 2023 雄獅樓盃, and 香港獅's 2022 entry, alongside two "Lo Leung drum" videos (羅梁鼓), a "Hong Kong Drunken" routine and Vietnamese-American traditional entries ¹¹¹. These are ground-cheng traditional contests, not high-pole. Only the titles and descriptions of the three named entries were read, so the readings below come from naming convention, not from watching the layouts.

The other Hong Kong names fall into recurring motifs: rescuing a creature (a lion cub, a carp, a sacred tortoise, a spirit bird); fetching an elixir (lingzhi, immortal herbs and flowers, which ties back to the lingzhi legend); defeating a pest (snake, scorpion pool, crocodile pool, tiger crab, spider); and literary or opera stories such as Hua Mulan joining the army in her father's place, the Monkey King borrowing the fan, the Cave of Silken Webs from Journey to the West, and the burning of the chained ships ¹⁰¹. Drinking themes (不醉無歸, 人生得意須盡歡 今朝有酒今朝醉) belong to the drunken-lion line.

Temple festivals and other circuits

Outside contests, Hong Kong's village and temple festivals still run the full ritual: lion worship at the temple (醒獅參拜), lion meetings (會獅), flower-cannon rites and cai qing at the Tsing Yi Tin Hau festival (2024 to 2026), Yuen Long's Shap Pat Heung and Ping Shan Tin Hau processions, Shau Kei Wan's Tam Kung procession (2024), the ten-yearly Ha Tsuen 太平清醮 (13 Nov 2024), a Hakka unicorn plucking the green at a statue consecration in Sheung Shui (3 Jun 2023), and a Hung Kuen association's New Year gathering that opened with lion worship, cai qing and a basin green (8 Mar 2026) ¹⁰¹. In Guangxi, the Wuzhou Longmu Temple invitational of 9 April 2016 gathered 13 teams from Guangdong, Guangxi and Macau to solve five organiser-set "old traditional cheng arrays", with the ground green subdivided into water, crab, under-the-bridge and character-dismantling greens ⁹¹. China's 15th National Games (Foshan, November 2025) included a southern lion "traditional" discipline beside obstacle and freestyle events ¹¹⁴. Hong Kong's Youth Arts Competition lets primary and secondary teams include a cai qing form, judged on the eight expressions ¹¹⁵.

In the United States the national rule book makes the green compulsory: a traditional routine's goal must be picking the green, the lingzhi or the wine, and "picking a cheng or lingji must include the actions of taking, eating and spitting". The same rules ban real fruit or vegetables as the cheng and ban firecrackers ⁶⁵. Massachusetts examples include the Calvin Chin Martial Arts Academy (Newton) and Columbia University teams at a 2017 lion competition with a wine-jug challenge ⁹⁷, and Hung Gar Boston Academy and Tiger Crane in Chinatown in 2021 with "an arrangement setup of oranges and green lettuce" ¹¹⁶. Competition rules are covered in Chapter 14.

Checklists for hosts and team leaders

These lists turn the customs above into practice. Where a point is local advice rather than a sourced custom, it says so.

For a host

• Book early. Singapore's Hok San Association says New Year home visits must be booked before New Year ²⁰. Expect the team leader to introduce the troupe; in Boston that is a red card, which the store keeps when it accepts ¹⁷.
• Prepare the green. A head of lettuce with the red packet tied inside it is the standard ⁵; add mandarin oranges for luck, and celery, spring onion or garlic for diligence, cleverness and careful accounts ^{14, 12}. Lettuce is preferred because it shreds ³¹.
• Decide the height. Hang it at the door, over the lintel or near the register ^{12, 31}. Higher means harder and traditionally a bigger envelope ^{31, 8}; Vietnamese hosts hang it low where elderly people live, to spare the lion danger ⁸. Agree any height with the team leader first (local advice).
• Prepare the altar and the rooms. Have the God of Wealth, earth god or ancestral altar ready for the lion's bows, and decide whether you want every room or office visited ^{11, 12}.
• Firecrackers. Traditional hosts hang a string at the door and light it after the green; the lion dances until it is finished ^{11, 17}. Check local fire rules first; competition rules in the US ban them ⁶⁵, and Singapore's Building and Construction Authority has barred cai qing lion dances in condominiums and inside residential units during Chinese New Year ¹⁰⁴.
• Receive the blessing. Stand where the green is spat; catching it means catching fortune, and a second red packet for the lion is customary at openings ^{12, 66}. Accept the orange or the scroll.
• Do not touch the horn, the forehead mirror or the tail; the forehead, eyes, ears, nose, face and mouth may be stroked for luck ^{58, 117}.
• In Hong Kong, any public lion dance needs a police permit applied for about 14 working days ahead ¹⁰⁷.

For a team leader

1. Before the day. Confirm where the green will hang, whether there is a puzzle cheng and what it represents (a zodiac snake must not be killed ²⁸), which altars are in the building, whether to bless every room, and whether the host will light firecrackers. Plan a one-way route that does not double back or cross another lion's path ¹⁸.
2. At the door. Fist salute if your school keeps one ¹³; present the team card ¹⁷; three bows; test the threshold before entering ^{11, 19}.
3. Inside. Bow at every shrine before anything else ²⁵; follow the Hong Kong rule of no seven-star drum and no kicking inside, only three-star and rolling drum ¹⁹; visit the rooms the host wants; leave tail first ¹⁵.
4. The green. Tell the whole story: see, startle, three tests, pluck in one attempt ². The head dancer removes the red packet and tucks it away before the leaves are thrown ¹⁵. Spit toward the host and the four directions ^{15, 19}; give the orange to the host or put it on the shrine ¹⁵; unroll the scroll if you carry one ⁸⁷.
5. Close. Groom, dance through the firecrackers if lit ¹⁷, give a token to whoever set a puzzle cheng ²⁸, three bows, back away ¹¹.
6. Meeting another lion on the road. Salute, keep the head low, never approach the other lion's tail, and exchange cards; see Chapter 9 ^{15, 41}.

Walking the four gates (走四門) in a choi cheng routine

The "Accounts differ" box on 走四門 earlier in this chapter had only the titles of Leroy Lee's two-part lesson 醒獅知識：採青套路，走四門 ("lion dance knowledge: the cai qing routine, walking the four gates"). The burned-in subtitles of both parts have now been read, in part. What follows is from Leroy Lee's lesson, as far as its subtitles could be read. This account paraphrases captions that were only partly legible, so uncertain lines are left out unless another source supports them.¹²

Part 1 (6:11): meaning, salute and the east gate

• The routine carries meaning. The lesson opens by saying the lion routine is more than a performance (0:00). The lion stands for good health and family peace (0:09), and the green is lettuce because 生菜 sounds like 生財, "make wealth" (0:16). This is the pun set out under "The puns".
• It begins with a salute. The routine starts with a formal salute, which the captions call one of the etiquette steps of the cai qing ritual. 走四門（上） @ 0:28
• The host invites, the lion blesses. When a household invites the lion, the lion must bring blessings to the host family. 走四門（上） @ 1:45
• East first. At the performance spot the lion must watch its direction. Facing the front, its head points east, and the walk begins from the east gate (東門, Cant. dung1 mun4, Mand. dōng mén), which is fixed as the starting point. 走四門（上） @ 3:01
• Counted steps. The footwork is drilled by counting one to five through the gate sequence. 走四門（上） @ 2:03
• Keep to the side. During the walk the lion must not stand in the middle and keeps to the side. A reason follows in the next lines, but it could not be read reliably. 走四門（上） @ 3:22

Part 2 (4:48): the pick in the centre

• Check the four doorways, then pick. After checking all four doorways, the lion may go to pick the greens. The four-gate walk ends with the picking, at the centre of the performance space. 走四門（下） @ 2:30
• Stages of the pick. The captions name testing the green (試青), then playing with it (玩青, Mand. wán qīng), swallowing (吞青, Mand. tūn qīng) and eating (吃青, Mand. chī qīng). These lines were only partly legible, but the terms appear in other sources: testing, playing and eating are in the beat tables above (as 試青, 弄青 or 戲青, and 食青), and 吞青 is in the anti-Qing reading in Chapter 3. 走四門（下） @ 3:33
• Why the centre. The lesson gives reasons for picking in the centre, but the lines were only partly legible. One appears to say that the lion returns the lettuce so the wealth goes back to the household, which matches the exchange described under "Why businesses pay". The other could not be read well enough to use.

Putting the two parts together

Read together, the lesson describes a fixed walking pattern inside the cai qing: a salute, a start at the east gate, counted steps through the gates on the side of the space and out of the middle, then a move to the centre to test, play with and eat the green. That is one reading of partly legible captions. The captions as read name the east gate first. The south and west gates come later in lines that were hard to read, and the north gate is not named in what could be read. The usual order of east, south, west, north is an assumption here, not something the captions confirm.

Sources for this section

1. 醒獅知識：採青套路，走四門（上） @ 0:00 - Leroy Lee, Los Angeles area, Chinese, instructional video (6:11), burned-in subtitles read in part from sampled frames and paraphrased
2. 醒獅知識：採青套路，走四門（下） @ 0:00 - Leroy Lee, Los Angeles area, Chinese, instructional video (4:48), burned-in subtitles read in part from sampled frames and paraphrased