Across Asia

Every southern lion in this chapter descends from the Pearl River Delta awakened lion (醒獅, Cant. sing2 si1, Mand. xǐngshī) of Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, which had already forked in the late 1800s into the Foshan and Heshan types (Chapter 5, Chapter 6). This chapter follows what happened when that lion met different governments, markets and audiences in Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia. The lion's body changed less than its job did: a licensed community custom in one place, a minority's symbol of survival in another, a national sport with a world championship in a third, a children's festival figure in a fourth. The last section answers where and when the splits happened.

Hong Kong: a licensed lion, and the meeting point of old and new

Permits, not a ban

As far as the sources found show, Hong Kong licensed the lion instead of banning it. Section 4C of the Summary Offences Ordinance (Cap. 228) makes it an offence to organise or join a lion, dragon or unicorn (qilin) dance, or any martial arts display attached to one, in a public place without a permit from the Commissioner of Police, who decides in his absolute discretion. The 1997 text set a fine of $2,000 and six months in prison; today it is a level 1 fine and six months, and prosecution needs the consent of the Secretary for Justice.¹ The section dates only from Ordinance No. 11 of 1981. Introducing it on 21 January 1981, the Secretary for Security told the Legislative Council that without control unruly or unlawful behaviour or blocked traffic might result. Until then control had been a licence under the Public Order Ordinance, but lion dances were left out of that Ordinance when it was rewritten in 1980. The bill let the Commissioner issue general permits, so reputable organisations that dance regularly did not have to apply each time. It passed on 11 February 1981.²³

Today's police guide (June 2026) describes a free permit, normally issued within 14 working days, for which the organiser must supply signed ID copies and personal-data forms for every participant. The permit holder must be present, and the conditions now include ones on safeguarding national security.⁴ The government's 2022 reply to the Legislative Council gave the purpose as keeping lawless elements out and protecting public order, and said applicants authorise police checks of criminal records; the security chief repeated that such checks were necessary.⁵⁶

Source: the government's 2022 reply.⁵ The 2021 and 2022 collapse matches the COVID gathering bans. The police keep no records of breaches of permit conditions.

The rules reach into small details. In October 2004 police stopped 18 lion dancers from joining a National Day parade in Yuen Long because they wore black trousers when the licence said light blue; an inspector explained that suspected triad members (secret-society gangsters) had worn black at public functions to show their strength.⁷ That is the documented link between lion dance and triads in the sources found: an official reason for a clothing rule, not a finding about any troupe.

The Hong Kong association and the 1992 meeting

The governing body is the Hong Kong Chinese Martial Arts Association (香港中國國術總會, HKCMAA), founded on 8 August 1969, renamed to add dragon and lion in 2006, and since 1 July 2023 the Chinese Martial Arts Dragon and Lion Dance Association of Hong Kong, China Limited. It is government-subvented, claims over 1,000 individual members, and its group members are mostly kung fu schools: Choy Li Fut, Hung Fut, Eagle Claw, White Eyebrow, Wing Chun and the police martial arts club.⁹¹⁰¹¹ Its own history, self-reported, outlines how lion dance became competition.

Source: the HKCMAA history and lion pages.⁹¹⁰

The 1992 invitational is the hinge of the chapter. Malaysia's Kun Seng Keng brought portable metal poles to it and won; its founder recalled that its head dancer was 13 and the Chinese and Hong Kong troupes averaged 50 to 60 years old.¹² Baidu Baike says the IDLDF was registered in Hong Kong on 23 January 1995 and that its secretariat moved to Beijing in July 1997, and the Yangcheng Evening News gives the same order.¹³¹⁴ A Malaysian magazine credits a proposal made in Hong Kong by Kun Seng Keng's chief coach, Siow Ho Phiew, with starting the federation and dates a pole standard to 1993, before the registration of 23 January 1995; the sources do not reconcile the two.¹²

Kung fu cinema and the Wong Fei-hung lion

Hong Kong film made the southern lion a global image. A 2006 essay by the Foshan scholar Yao Chaowen counts over 100 Hong Kong films about Wong Fei-hung (黃飛鴻, Cant. wong4 fei1 hung4, Mand. Huáng Fēihóng), the Guangdong martial arts master of lion-dance legend, and says nine carry lion dance in the title between 1956 and 1997, including 黃飛鴻巧奪鯊魚青 (1969, "Wong Fei-hung's clever seizure of the shark green").¹⁵ A film titled for a lion on plum-blossom poles premiered on 2 April 1968, so the idea of a pole lion was on screen before Malaysia's contests.¹⁵ Once Upon a Time in China III (黃飛鴻之三獅王爭霸, Tsui Hark, with Jet Li) reached Hong Kong cinemas on 11 February 1993: the Empress Dowager Cixi and Li Hongzhang stage a national lion contest in Beijing, the finale is a mass lion battle up a scaffold, and Wong throws back the gold medal, calling the infighting a defeat for China.¹⁶ Malaysian speakers blame 1970s Shaw Brothers-era films for the image of lion troupes as fighters, while one who worked on a Shaw Brothers film says troupes were hired only for temple and shop-opening shots;¹⁷ a Malaysian researcher says troupes adopted the gold-and-red head after Jackie Chan's The Young Master (1980).¹⁸ Later films are in Chapter 15.

What "Hong Kong style" means

"Hong Kong style" is an ambiguous label; mainland press says Hong Kong and Macau lions copy animal habits with a brisk, lively rhythm, while US troupes say "HK lion" for any head made in a Hong Kong workshop.¹⁹ In this chapter it means four things.

• Southern lion with northern moves (南獅北舞, Cant. naam4 si1 bak1 mou5, Mand. nánshī běiwǔ): a shorter body and acrobatic choreography borrowed from the northern lion, which the Hong Kong association places in the 1980s.¹⁰
• A strong ground-cheng contest culture. The open championship has a compulsory ground-cheng group (地青規定組) with set tasks such as the snake green (蛇青), crab green (蟹青), plate green (盤青) and drunken green (醉青), plus an apparatus-array group. Traditional cups include the four-seas series, the Hung Hei-gun memorial cup and the cup named for the lion-head workshop 雄獅樓; a 2019 final at Lam Tsuen used set qingzhen (青陣, Cant. ceng1 zan6, a set layout of obstacles and greens).²⁰²¹²²
• The Lo Leung drum (羅梁鼓, Cant. lo4 loeng4 gu2), fast and rim-heavy, from Macau (below). A 2017 Australian practitioner blog lists Hok San, Fut San "Hong Kong style", Vietnamese and Lo Leung beats as all heard at events, and concludes there is no good or bad, just evolution.²³ See Chapter 7.
• Old and new troupes side by side. The South China Morning Post said in 2018 that Hong Kong has over 100 troupes and that almost every New Territories walled village once had one; a 2019 airline feature quoted a head coach saying only about ten are truly professional, and a founder saying that in the past you could not dance on wooden stakes or use a very colourful head.²⁴²⁵

A 2018 HK01 feature gives a picture of an older Hong Kong lion. It describes 周漢興 (Chau Hon-hing) as master-grandfather of the coach 姜偉池; his black Zhang Fei lion had a green nose, iron horn, toothbrush beard and a red beard, said to show victory in blood.²⁸

Heritage, politics and women

Lion dance is item 2.1 under Performing Arts in Hong Kong's first Intangible Cultural Heritage Inventory (June 2014, 480 items; 507 after December 2024). It is on the inventory only, not on the Representative List; the lion head appears under paper crafting (item 5.41.6).²⁹ After 2020 the lion also joined political occasions: in 2021 over 300 young people danced 100 red lions across Hong Kong landmarks for the Communist Party centenary.³⁰ Women's roles are changing; a four-time Hong Kong open champion told HK01 that the older generation believed girls must not touch an eye-opened lion head.³¹ Hong Kong teams also compete abroad on poles: the Hong De association scored 8.86 at the 2026 CNI Lion King Cup in Muar, Johor (Singapore 8.77, Australia 7.41).³² Etiquette is in Chapter 9.

Macau and the 1984 Hilton contest

Macau's best-documented lineage is Lo Leung (羅梁, Cant. lo4 loeng4, Mand. Luó Liáng), named for the sworn brothers Lo Yuet Sing (羅悅勝) and Leung Kwok Wing (梁國榮), who opened martial halls in Guangdong in the 1930s, fled the Japanese invasion to Macau and founded the Lo Leung Brothers' Martial Arts Troupe in 1938. It teaches Choy Li Fut and southern lion, and its lions train on poles on a 14-storey rooftop.³³³⁴ Renamed the Lo Leung Athletic Association in 1948, it was registered in Lisbon under Portuguese rule and listed as sport, since the Portuguese did not know how to translate guoshu.³³

A Zhongshan Daily feature that quotes Pan Zhongjun (潘仲君, 76) is one of two accounts of the 1984 contest found; a 2025 New Express feature tells the same Lo Leung win as the "1984 Hilton Cup", so the two are not independent.³⁵ It says Hong Kong's TVB and the Hilton hotel (open 1963 to 1995) ran an international lion contest in 1984, that Lo Leung entered for Macau, won with a formation called "two men carry water" (二人擔水), and won again in 1985; and that in 1986 it went to Hong Kong a third time and performed "leaping the dragon gate" (飛躍龍門), a live jump of three metres onto chair backs, for which the athletes were insured for over HK$200,000.³³³⁶ Between 1984 and 1987 the TV director wanted more danger each year, and a half-hour traditional display had to shrink to five minutes. Pan says the faster rhythm that resulted became the fast Lo Leung lion and drum of today.³³ The article adds a win at the 1988 Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau workers' contest and second place in Guangzhou in 1992, 0.3 points behind the HKCMAA A team, and a Zhongshan teacher says many mainland cheng layouts came from Hong Kong and Macau masters.³³

Macau still runs contests. The Macau Lion King Championship has been held since 2010, and the Zhong Yi Kung Fu Association of Madison, Wisconsin, placed third there in 2019, said to be the first US top-three finish.³⁷³⁸ In 1998 a Macau Wushu Association team took second at Genting (see Malaysia).³⁹

Malaysia: identity politics, the high pole and Genting

Arrival and the first troupes

Lion dance came to Malaya with Chinese migrants. In Penang, Tan Sooi Beng of Universiti Sains Malaysia writes, it arrived with 19th-century migrants, mostly Hokkien, as a temple-deity performance and the martial display of kung fu associations; most troupes there and in Medan, Sumatra, dance the southern lion, in Foshan (Fo Shan Shi) and Heshan (He Shan Shi) head types.¹⁸ Malaysia's 2025 heritage register gives the same picture: Guangdong and Hokkien migrants in the 19th century, and associations that practise mostly southern lion of the Foshan and Heshan types.⁴⁰ Who founded the first troupe is not settled. Liang Litang (梁溧棠), chair of the Selangor and Kuala Lumpur Dragon and Lion Dance Joint Association (雪隆龍獅聯合總會) and an IDLDF president, rejects the popular story that Zheng He brought the lion, saying there is no evidence. He says documentary research shows the first Malayan lion troupe was founded by the Shunde Association (順德會館) in Kuala Lumpur, and that a troupe merged in 1929 with the Selangor Lian Sheng lion troupe.⁴¹ Shunde is one of Foshan's three home counties, so if this oral claim holds, Kuala Lumpur's first lion had a Foshan-side parentage; it needs archive confirmation. A second oral account, from the LongShi Stories podcast, points the same way. Liu Jun Lin (刘俊霖/劉俊霖), who leads the Hong Guan troupe in Penang and is general secretary of the Chow Gar Fist Federation of Penang, says his lineage's founders taught martial arts, not lion dance, and that its lion came from the Shunde Association; he asks the hosts whether they know "the first lion dance troupe in Malaysia", which in context appears to mean the same troupe, and gives this origin as the reason many Chow Gar troupes dance Foshan lions. LongShi Stories EP.5, Liu Jun Lin @ 16:58.⁴²

1969 to 1990: permits, stigma and the tiger dance

The racial violence of 13 May 1969 and the New Economic Policy of 1971 reshaped what the state would support. The 1971 National Culture Congress produced a policy of three principles: a national culture based on the indigenous (Malay) culture, acceptance of suitable elements from others, and Islam as an important component. Lion dance was not in that picture.⁴³ A Malaysian business magazine says lion dance was not permitted except at Chinese New Year for about two decades after 1969, and that the "ban" lifted in 1990, with a policy shift towards multiculturalism.¹²

"The lion dance represented the protection and survival of Chinese culture."

Tan Sooi Beng, on why Chinese groups chose the lion for revival after 1969, Senri Ethnological Reports 65 (2007)

In Penang, performances needed a police permit under section 27(2) of the Police Act 1967, with conditions that kept the dance to a defined space instead of a street procession, because the lion dance had been associated with gangsterism and secret societies. The Penang Chinese Martial Arts Association, about 40 troupes, was formed partly to protect troupes from harassment over permits, and in 1985 it pulled them out of the Chingay parade.¹⁸ In 1974 Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak was welcomed with a lion dance on a visit to Mao Zedong; the business magazine calls it a turning point, and the Resorts World film says he asked whether Malaysia had a lion dance and wanted lions to greet him on his return, so teams assembled at the Selangor Padang.¹²⁴¹ Then in 1979 the Home Affairs Minister, Ghazali Shafie, declared the lion dance foreign and proposed a tiger dance instead, since the tiger, unlike the lion, is found in Malaysia, with gong, flute, tabla or gamelan music. Protests were widespread.¹⁸¹² A Penang official recalled in 2025 that in the 1970s lion dance needed a permit and someone proposed a tiger dance.⁴⁴

The stigma was real on the ground. In a Malaysian documentary from about 2007, speakers say parents feared lion troupes in the 1980s and 1990s because of gangsterism and that early members fought other troupes and kung fu schools; a Shaw Brothers crew member denies a link, another speaker admits one.¹⁷ Tan reads the 1980s differently: the lion shed its shady image and became a symbol of Malaysian Chinese identity, and 1990s liberalisation brought faster permits, lions at Penang state functions alongside Malay forms such as boria, and troupes competing to field over 100 lions at state New Year events, a shift she links partly to Mahathir's "Bangsa Malaysia" of 1995.¹⁸

Contests and the high pole

Contests came first. Tan's endnotes say national lion contests started in 1983 under the Malaysian Federation of Chinese Martial Arts Associations, with 39 troupes in 1983, 102 in 1984 and 300 in 1986; Chinese Wikipedia and Siow credit the Selangor-KL federation with the first contest in 1983 and say contests grew from under ten a year to over a hundred.¹⁸⁴⁷⁴⁵ A Malaysian documentary adds the pole story. A master named Seau in the captions, almost certainly Siow Ho Phiew (蕭斐弘, Mand. Xiāo Fěihóng, also Siow Fei Hong), says lion dance on poles began at Malaysia's first pole competition in 1983. Lions had danced on the ground, then on tables, chairs and pots, then poles. The first poles were five white wooden plum-blossom poles about 33 inches high, with more added in the mid-1980s; the organisers were unsure whether high poles had been used before, and took their inspiration from kung fu novels and films. Iron fittings replaced wooden bases, rubber caps replaced the narrow wooden tops, and iron poles under three metres became the standard.⁴⁸ DANCE, THE LION DOCUMENTARY - PART 1 @ 15:22.

Kun Seng Keng (關聖宮龍獅團, Mand. Guānshènggōng lóngshī tuán, the troupe of the Guan Di temple in Muar, Johor) turned this into a world circuit. Founded in 1988 under Tan Chong Hing, with Siow as chief coach (The Edge calls him arguably the grandmaster of Malaysian lion dance), it took prototype metal poles that could be dismantled and packed into cargo to the 1992 Hong Kong invitational, and won.¹²⁴⁵ In 1993 a standard "Asian Pole Size" set poles at 1 to 3 m and a 10-point scoring system was introduced. The Edge adds that the idea of dancing on poles came from other groups, and Kun Seng Keng is credited with the standard design.¹² The troupe claims about 58 world titles, and its founder says its policy is to teach lion dance as a cultural activity, with traditional but not religious ritual, which let Malay members and others join.⁴⁵¹² Penang's Mei Hu (美湖體育及文化協會/美湖体育及文化协会) came to the poles later than Kun Seng Keng. Jason Loh of the club says it was founded in 1979 and practised mainly martial arts until 1998, when its board sent members once a week for a year to Machang Bubok, near the Penang and Kedah border, to learn high-pole lion dance under a master from Kulim, Kedah, before it built its own poles. LongShi Stories EP.6, Jason Loh @ 06:04.⁴⁹ He says it tried to enter Genting in 2003, was told registration was full, and first competed there in 2005; as the world championship ran in even years these were presumably national-championship entries, and his main regret is never reaching the world championship. The episode description credits the team with Northern Region titles at the national championship in 2019 and 2024.⁴⁹

Pole sizes vary by place and source, so check the rule of the contest you enter. The pole sets themselves have changed. Jason Loh of Penang's Mei Hu says early competitions used "self-selected" poles that teams brought and arranged themselves, with only Genting using standard, cross-shaped public poles. LongShi Stories EP.6, Jason Loh @ 05:36.⁴⁹ He says his senior jumped the cross set and he jumped the "airplane" set, and the interview describes Genting's standard set as now the "King's" set, laid out like the character 王, which Loh says offers more routes because dancers choose where to run. LongShi Stories EP.6 @ 19:23.⁴⁹

Sources: the documentary, The Edge, the Straits Times video, Bernama and the Indonesian and Vietnamese reports cited below.^{481253545556575859}

Poles changed the lion's body and its makers. Siow founded the head workshop Wan Seng Hang in 1986; its heads are called "Malaysian lions" (馬來獅) in Chinese-speaking regions, framed in rattan because bamboo breaks easily, and exported to Australia, France, the US and China.⁶⁰⁶¹ The maker Lin Mingguo (林明國) says he officially began making heads in 1982, ties them with soft rattan that bounces back, and began the non-traditional colours.⁴¹ Malaysian heads are lighter than Taiwanese, mainland and Hong Kong ones, according to a 1991 newspaper cited by Tan.¹⁸ By 2014 Siow said apparatus contests, which replace height with abstract mountains, rocks, streams and bridges, were 60% of national contests, partly because parents worried less.⁴⁵

The Genting World Lion Dance Championship

The world championship (雲頂世界獅王爭霸賽, Mand. Yúndǐng shìjiè shīwáng zhēngbà sài) is co-organised by Resorts World Genting and the Selangor-KL association and has been held at Genting Highlands since 1994, biennially, with COVID cancelling 2020 and 2022.³⁹ Liang says a Malay vice-chairman of Genting gave him a letter asking him to organise it, and that Genting's boss wanted a sport that combines culture.⁴¹

Source: Chinese Wikipedia's table, checked against Sin Chew for 2023 and 2025.³⁹⁶²⁶³ Kun Seng Keng won or shared 12 of 13 editions to 2018; its only loss was 2012, when Hong Teck beat the nine-time champion 9.27 to 9.25 in its first international outing.³⁹⁴⁵ The jump from 9.35 in 2018 to 9.73 in 2023 suggests a marking change for which no explanation was found, so do not compare scores across it.

In 2023 Yi Wei B won with 17 high-difficulty moves, 9.73, over Sungai Way Khuan Loke of Selangor, which scored 9.64 with 23. Kun Seng Keng fell in the preliminaries and was eliminated, its tail dancer carried off by medics. Thirty-six teams entered and the champion's prize was US$15,000; Sin Chew called it the first time Malaysia failed to keep the title.⁶⁴⁶² In 2025 forty teams from about fifteen countries and regions entered for US$18,000 and a new award for highest difficulty; Yi Wei B retained the title with 9.78 and 18 difficulty moves, LED lights and a Nezha prop, and several teams withdrew injured. "Western Lion King" winners include Leung's White Crane of San Francisco (2006, 2010).⁶⁵⁶³³⁹

Sport and culture pull apart here, and the organisers say so. Liang says in the film that today's high-pole lion dance has already separated from culture and stresses difficulty, speed and spectacle. JIWA SINGA: Kisah Sebuah Warisan @ 14:13.⁴¹ A Genting executive asked why lion dance should not follow skateboarding into the Olympics.⁶⁵ In 2004 Liang said 36 of 72 countries asked had agreed to back lion dance for the 2008 Beijing Olympics; it was not added.⁴⁷

Sar Ping associations

For teams that drum Sar Ping, Malaysia is one of the system's two homes. The Heshan lineage reached Singapore long before (below); a Confederation of Sar Ping Lion Dance was founded in Kuala Lumpur in 2006 and a World Sar Ping (Lui Pai) Lion Arts Federation (世界沙坪呂派獅藝總會) in 2014, after the Singapore lineage head Chan Siew Kee (陳紹箕) founded his Sar Ping Lion Dance Centre in 2004.⁶⁶ The Malaysian documentary says the confederation's disciples are found in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, China, Macau, the US and Canada.¹⁷ A UiTM student paper names three basic Malaysian beats, three-, five- and seven-star (三星, 五星, 七星), with five-star the most common.⁵⁰ Drum routes are in Chapter 5 and Chapter 7.

Identity today: heritage, many faces and money

In July 2007 the culture ministry declared lion dance on poles a national heritage item, said to be the first Chinese cultural item so listed.⁴⁶⁴⁴ In 2025 the Department of National Heritage registered "Lion Dance" as a whole (Gazette P.U.(B) 75), saying it is open to all, fosters national unity and is performed also by Malay and Indian communities.⁴⁰ Malaysia and China have agreed to nominate lion dance jointly to UNESCO, reportedly under the name "performing arts and social practices using lion-form props"; UNESCO has no standalone lion dance listing yet.⁴⁴⁶⁷

Many dancers are now not Chinese. Siti Aishah, a 17-year-old Malay Muslim in a hijab from Penang, went viral on TikTok in 2023 as a head dancer, saying she first feared her father would not allow it because she is a girl.⁶⁸ Fatihah, a Muslim from Sabah, notes drum skins are cowhide, lets non-Muslim teammates enter the temple, and sees it as sport.⁴¹ Money shows how embedded the lion is: in February 2026 the Johor government gave 460 red-and-blue lions in the state flag colours and 230 drums to 230 troupes, part of RM17 million for the Chinese community;⁶⁹ a Klang school's troupe raised RM808,888.88 from New Year cai qing for the school in 2026;⁷⁰ and a Johor team spent RM80,000 to win the 21st national championship in September 2026.⁷¹

Singapore: clan halls, a state federation and a multi-ethnic lion

The Heshan lion in a port city

Singapore is the diaspora centre of the Heshan lion (Chapter 5). An 1888 inscription quoted in a Heshan lineage book records Heshan villagers in Singapore dancing the lion up the hill at spring and autumn rites.⁷² The first southern lion troupe, Yi Yi Dang (怡怡堂, Mand. Yíyí táng), dates from 1920 and became the Hok San Association Lion Dance Troupe in 1939, the year the Kong Chow Wui Koon (岡州會館, Cant. gong1 zau1 wui6 gun2) was founded; other clan troupes include those of the Sam Sui Wui Kun and the Canton Wong Clan Association.⁷³ Singapore then reshaped the lion. In the 1950s Hok San elders changed the black eyebrows to white and cut the length from 12 to 6 feet, according to a 2023 study, while the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre says 1960s southern lions were about 3 m; the figures are not reconciled.⁷⁴⁷³ The best-known hybrid, Fut-Hok or Fo-He (佛鶴, Cant. fat6 hok6, Mand. Fóhè), a lion mixing Foshan and Heshan features, was made in Singapore, not Guangdong: the Kong Chow Wui Koon combined the two forms, and Wikipedia dates this to the 1960s without citation.⁷³⁸ The Hong Sheng Koon (鴻勝館), a Fut San and Choy Li Fut school, dates from 1965, and a school scout lion group danced with 10 lions at the first National Day Parade in 1966.⁷³⁷⁵ Singapore is also remembered as a keeper of the art while the mainland was cut off, in the testimony of the Sar Ping head Chan Siew Kee; that is lineage memory, not documented history.⁷⁶

A state federation, a firecracker ban and a permit system

The Singapore National Pugilistic Federation (新加坡全國國術總會) was founded on 3 December 1967 with encouragement from Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, according to a 2014 minister's speech. It became the National Wushu Federation in 1991 and on 29 June 2008 the Singapore Wushu Dragon and Lion Dance Federation (新加坡武術龍獅總會, "Wuzong"). The speech also notes that martial arts groups were affiliated with clan associations and records S$100,000 from the ministry and the People's Association in 2014 to promote dragon and lion dance.⁷⁷⁷⁸ Firecrackers explain why Singapore's New Year sounds different from Hong Kong's: a partial ban came in March 1970 after a fire killed six and injured 68, a total ban in August 1972 after an explosion killed two, and since 2003 only government-appointed personnel may set them off.⁷⁹ The lion's drums and cymbals became the festival's main noise.

Today the federation and the People's Association jointly control the Chinese New Year cai qing permits: only the federation issues them, to affiliated clubs, community clubs and schools.⁸⁰

Source: the federation's 2026 circulars.⁸⁰ The Straits Times reported that cai qing is not allowed in condominiums or inside units during the New Year.⁸¹ In March 2026 a video of a God of Wealth character lying down and bumping the lion's tail during the orange-peeling moment drew anger; the federation's president said teams normally do not bring a God of Wealth and that indecent moves added for innovation damage tradition.⁸²

Who dances, and the Genting turn

By 2024 Singapore had over 200 troupes registered under the Societies Act and over 4,000 cai qing performances at New Year.⁷³ Lion dance joined the national heritage inventory in April 2018 (ICH-016); the entry says learners include students, national servicemen and young men and women, and that troupes have young Indian and Malay members.⁸³ A Malay dancer in a Mothership profile started at seven on temple cymbals, treats lion dance as sport and not prayer, respects Chinese culture without joining its prayers, and dreams of Genting, which he calls the lion dance World Cup. Meet the Malay lion dancers from Singapore @ 02:32.⁸⁴ The Ngee Ann City National Lion Dance Championships held their 25th edition in 2019, which suggests a start around 1995.⁸⁵ Yi Wei's two dancers explain the pole craft in a Straits Times video: plates about 30 cm across, a backward somersault down in which the tail must land first, a "spider" in which the head hangs from the poles over the tail's back, and blind backward moves of 1.4 m. Anatomy of a lion dance with Singapore Yiwei Athletic Association @ 01:09.⁵³

Old etiquette arguments survive too. Eric Tan of the Hong Sheng Koon says lions that meet must not smell or bite each other, then salute and exchange banners, and rejects a Hong Kong view that a southern lion must bow low to a qilin: that is qilin to qilin only. Keeping Tradition ALIVE: Eric Tan on ETIQUETTE @ 02:15.⁷⁵ See Chapter 9.

Vietnam: múa lân, Tết and Trung Thu

Names, communities and halls

In the South the southern lion is the lân, from kỳ lân, the qilin (麒麟, Cant. kei4 leon4, Mand. qílín); the dance is múa lân and troupes are lân sư rồng. The animal is officially a qilin, one of the four sacred animals (Tứ Linh: dragon, qilin, tortoise, phoenix), and Vietnamese heads carry a dragon jaw, qilin nose, phoenix brows and turtle details.⁸⁶⁸⁷⁸⁸ English Wikipedia says múa sư tử is the northern style, while Người Lao Động says the North calls all lion dance múa sư tử; both usages exist.⁸⁸⁷

The professional tradition belongs to the Hoa, the ethnic Chinese of Saigon and Chợ Lớn (堤岸, Cholon, the Chinese quarter), with about 120 troupes in Ho Chi Minh City after the 2025 provincial merger.⁵⁷ Troupes are đường (堂, Mand. táng, Cant. tong4), halls tied to martial lineages. A 2024 Hanoi TV documentary says lion dance came with Chinese martial arts masters into Chợ Lớn and was sponsored by the Chinese guilds.⁸⁹ Named halls include Nhơn Nghĩa Đường (仁義堂, Cant. jan4 ji6 tong4), Liên Nghĩa Đường, Hằng Anh Đường and Tinh Anh Đường.⁸⁷⁵⁸ Thắng Nghĩa Đường runs an ancestral hall devoted to Choy Li Fut (Thái Lý Phật) and the lion, the clearest Vietnamese link to a Fut San family art.⁵⁷ There is a Heshan link as well: the Annam Tung Yee Society (同義社) opened a school in Chợ Lớn in 1924 and registered in 1943 as the Heshan Natives Association in Vietnam.⁷² Hokkien families dance a different, ritual-only lion, the múa hẩu, with a round head like a winnowing basket and a taboo on lifting it skyward.⁹⁰

Saigon in the 1950s: beards, flags and gangs

One source describes the Saigon lion world before 1963: an audio reading of an unsigned memoir by a man who grew up there in the early 1950s, posted by a Vietnamese lion-maker. It is one recollection with no sources, so treat the numbers as lore. The memoir says that at Tết lions were ranked by beard colour under unwritten underworld rules (giang hồ), and the five top white-beard lions each belonged to a district gang. A 2024 newspaper agrees on the principle: a troupe had to be 30 years old to use a silver-bearded lion, and breaking the rules caused bloody fights before 1975.⁹²⁸⁷ Những con lân ở Sài Gòn trong thập niên 1950 @ 02:14.

Source: the memoir reading.⁹²

The memoir also gives etiquette that parallels Chapter 9. Troupes planted a flag before the host's house once the price was agreed, and rivals had to respect it. Two lions of equal rank bowed to the ancestor and once to each other and moved on; a junior approached a senior and bowed three times, and the senior bowed once back. In a stand-off, the troupe leaders cupped their hands and the drums played three rounds from slow to fast while the lions passed each other. The memoir says the Chợ Lớn lion was richest and best organised, run by Chợ Lớn martial schools under guild patronage and financed by a succession of gangs, and that for the greens-and-money feat it stacked round tabletop boards into a pyramid instead of using poles.⁹²

Heads, Ông Địa and two festivals

Vietnamese Wikipedia, which appears to be largely translated from English Wikipedia, names Phật Sơn (Foshan) and Hạc Sơn (Heshan, "Crane Mountain"), and the press never labels Vietnamese lions this way, but practitioners do: the Hanoi documentary calls Phật Sơn the "tiger-leopard" form, strong and suited to the ground, and Hạc Sơn the cat form, light and suited to height; the hybrid is Phật Hạc.⁸⁶⁸⁹ A Vietnamese head maker describes Phật Sơn as curved-mouthed with a high forehead and sharp horn, Hạc Sơn as round-mouthed with a low forehead and blunt horn, and Phật Hạc as in between with longer eyes; he warns that "Mengkok" is a Malaysian troupe's name, not a head model. Phân biệt các mẫu lân Phật Sơn - Hạc Sơn - Phật Hạc @ 05:52.⁹³

The lion's partner is Ông Địa, a pot-bellied, grinning figure with an areca-spathe fan who leads the lân, fans smoke away from it when firecrackers go off, and beams when it bows to the red envelope (lì xì) as if he were the giver.⁸⁶⁹⁴ He is the counterpart of the Cantonese Big-Head Buddha (大頭佛, Cant. daai6 tau4 fat6), and sources give him two identities: the earth god Thổ Địa, invoked by traders, and Maitreya (Phật Di Lặc).⁸⁶⁹⁴

Vietnam has two lion seasons. Tết Nguyên Đán (Lunar New Year) is the professional season, with shop openings and the Chợ Lớn lantern-festival parade, which had about 1,200 performers in 2026.⁹⁸ Tết Trung Thu (Mid-Autumn, the 15th of the 8th lunar month) is the children's festival, with children's street troupes using papier-mâché heads and Ông Địa masks and businesses hiring professional troupes; in Tam Kỳ in 2026 four children pooled 800,000 dong for a head and earned 20,000 busking.⁹⁹¹⁰⁰

Poles, sport and heritage

Vietnam joined the competition circuit late. A speaker in the Hanoi documentary says his troupe first competed abroad in Singapore in 1995, when there were no international rules and plum-blossom pole routines had not yet formed, and that the 2011 rules became the standard. Lịch sử Nghệ thuật múa Lân Sư Rồng @ 23:04 also has a passage on the drum: it leads like a whip that makes the lion leap, bow, lie down and climb, so it must follow the footwork.⁸⁹ At the 10th International Lion Dance Competition in Singapore in January 2017, two Ho Chi Minh City troupes took first and second, Vietnam's first top prizes there, on mai hoa thung poles up to 4 m.⁵⁹ Vietnamese teams won two golds and a silver at the 7th Asian Lion and Dragon Dance Championship in Indonesia in October 2025.¹⁰¹ No Vietnamese Genting champion appears in the sources, though Vietnamese teams have entered: one scored 9.35 in the 2023 final listing, another fell in the preliminaries.⁶⁴⁶² The Cần Thơ troupe Tư Anh Đường (also printed Tú Anh Đường) began training women on the poles in 2008, when none did, and by 2018 had trained 22 women record-holders.¹⁰²

On 30 March 2025 the culture ministry inscribed "the lion-sư-dragon art of the Hoa of Ho Chi Minh City" on the national intangible heritage list, so the lion is officially an ethnic Hoa art.¹⁰³ The Vietnam Lion-Sư-Dragon Federation was formed in 2023 under Phạm Quang Long, after Cần Thơ (2014) and Ho Chi Minh City (about 2020) federations, and he wants an official place at the 10th National Sports Games in 2026.⁸⁷¹⁰⁴

Indonesia: barongsai, the 1967 ban and a multi-ethnic sport

Name and arrival

Indonesians call the lion dance barongsai: barong is the Balinese masked-dance word and sai is Hokkien for lion (獅). The word exists only in Indonesia.¹⁰⁷¹⁰⁸ Most Chinese Indonesians are Hokkien or Hakka (a 1982 estimate counted about 180,000 Cantonese against 1.3 million Hokkien), yet the lion used is southern, with Foshan and Heshan heads.¹⁸¹⁰⁹ Sources give the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries for its arrival, none on primary evidence. Before 1965 almost every branch of the Chinese association Tiong Hoa Hwe Koan (中華會館, founded 1900) had a group.^10755108

1965 to 2000: banned, tolerated, revived

Barongsai stopped after the failed coup of 30 September 1965. Presidential Instruction 14 of 1967 (6 December 1967) said Chinese religion, beliefs and customs must not be practised openly, and public Chinese New Year (Imlek) was banned from 1968 to 1999.¹¹⁰¹⁰⁷ Partial survival is documented. Semarang's Sam Poo Kong temple kept large shows going (one source); Bogor's Cap Go Meh (15th night) festival had a lion in 1970 under a letter allowing it for that celebration only; in Jakarta the Bel Pas club practised in market alleys; Surabaya's Boen Bio troupe practised inside the temple without cymbals or gongs.^10711155 The federation's secretary-general says that in Padang lion dance was allowed once a year, indoors, and that friends in Java were chased and some arrested when the loud music gave them away.¹⁰⁸

Reform came in steps. Presidential Decree 6 of 2000, signed by Abdurrahman Wahid on 17 January 2000, revoked Instruction 14, so Chinese customs could be practised in public without a special permit; Imlek became an optional holiday in 2001 and a national holiday from 2003.^107110112 In 2003 Ronald Sjarif of the Jakarta troupe Kong Ha Hong told the Christian Science Monitor his teenage troop had played seven shows in ten hours one Friday, and that he could hardly believe the culture could be honoured openly again.¹¹³

Rebuilding from video discs: the sport

Indonesia rebuilt its lion from outside. Teams learned moves from video discs of Malaysian and international contests, richer clubs hired overseas trainers, and surviving bamboo heads were old and heavy.¹¹⁷¹⁸ The federation's secretary-general says clubs sought mostly Malaysian teachers after 2000, who upgraded teams in Sumatra, Java and Kalimantan.¹⁰⁸ Boen Bio's 2012 study trip to Khuan Loke in Malaysia led to its renaming and to learning set standard movements, which a Surabaya paper calls a commodification into attractive acrobatic forms.⁵⁵ A Malaysian IDLDF chief technical judge was invited to train the national team.¹¹⁶ Hery Lim (Heryanto Salim), deputy secretary-general of FOBI, names one of the Malaysian teachers. He began lion dancing in Padang, West Sumatra, in 1998 and says the Malaysian coach whom the captions call Huang Guolun came to Padang in 1999; before that, Indonesian lion dance was in an older traditional style, and the first team to adopt the Malaysian modern style came from Padang, after which teams across Indonesia followed. LongShi Stories EP.1, Hery Lim @ 08:09.¹¹⁸ The podcast's co-host Yu Heng (于恒/于恆) says in its launch episode that Huang Guolun (as the captions render the name), known in the lion dance circle as "Lawrence", is his father.¹¹⁹

The federation story: Persobarin was formed in 2000 in Surabaya with Dahlan Iskan as chair; several federations existed in the 2000s, KONI would accept only one, and they merged into FOBI, formed 9 August 2012 and recognised by KONI around 2012 to 2013. Performers are "athletes".^55108120 Barongsai was an exhibition sport at the 2016 National Sports Week (712 athletes, 15 provinces), and a drum category was first held on 23 April 2017 at the Living World all-star event with 12 teams from six places.¹⁰⁷¹²¹ FOBI had 25 provincial boards in 2022; its secretary-general claims 31 provinces, about 3,000 athletes, and that Indonesia was the first country whose government accepted lion dance as a sport, a claim hard to square with China's 1995 national association (below).¹²²¹⁰⁸ Hery Lim gives a participant's account of the steps, in an interview filmed at the National Sports Week (PON) in Medan, where he is FOBI's technical representative. He dates the opening of lion dance to 2000 and government recognition to 2012, and says it took part in 2016 as an exhibition whose medals did not count and, after a COVID gap ("started again in 2020 due to COVID"), now formally joins the games, which are held every four years. LongShi Stories EP.1, Hery Lim @ 23:45.¹¹⁸ Performers are now called athletes, he says, with a monthly income (the captions omit the amount) and food and vitamins paid by the government; at the games they represent their province, which arranges their stay and travel, and large props came by bus or truck over two days or in cargo containers at state cost.¹¹⁸

Source: Indonesian Wikipedia.¹⁰⁷

Who dances now, and what became of the ritual

Most dancers today are not Chinese. A Bogor troupe leader estimates 80 to 90 percent of members nationwide are not of Chinese descent, and only 2 of his troupe's 40 are.¹¹⁷ A Surabaya researcher found that before 2000 players were predominantly ethnic Chinese and after 2000 mostly Muslim or Christian Javanese and Madurese, and that for Chinese it is a symbol of freedom; a Surabaya team reports about 20 percent members of Chinese descent now. None is a national statistic.¹²³⁵⁶

The Surya Naga team of Surabaya shows what happened to ritual. Before the reform it bowed three times to the altar and set out oranges (luck), mustard greens (prosperity) and water (life); now that is optional and set by the host. Old costumes were once burned and are now donated to schools, and the team is invited to Catholic, Protestant and Islamic events. Training moved from horse stance first to music and posture first, partly because international rules cap poles at 3 m.⁵⁶ Hery Lim says a coach must choreograph routines, make props and understand athletes' psychology. LongShi Stories EP.1, Hery Lim @ 13:05.¹¹⁸ His own coach, he says, hit athletes and, in his words, without it "there would be no champion"; his own team no longer whips people because methods have changed. LongShi Stories EP.1 @ 14:53.¹¹⁸ The federation's secretary-general says the old blessing that put the spirit into the lion (probably eye-dotting) no longer exists in the sport world, though some lions still visit homes. Barongsai Indonesia: Berjaya di Asia @ 10:10.¹⁰⁸ See Chapter 10 for the blessing.

Where and when the splits happened

The lion did not split once, and not along national lines at first. It split along institutions: who licensed it, who taught it, and what contest or festival gave it a purpose. In order:

1. Foshan versus Heshan, inside Guangdong, late 1800s. Every place in this chapter inherited some mix of the two.
2. Export, 1850s to 1930s. Heshan lions were in Singapore by 1888; a Foshan-side Shunde troupe may have started Kuala Lumpur's lion by 1929; Cholon had a Heshan natives school from 1924. Each place froze the version it received.
3. Mainland China against everyone else, 1966 to 1976. The Cultural Revolution put lion dance among the Spring Festival prohibitions. Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore kept halls and troupes, and Malaysian troupes kept going under permits. Hong Kong sources say Guangzhou troupes moved to Hong Kong, but that is popular history without primary evidence, and Guangzhou also had a state-sanctioned workers' lion team in the early 1970s.^12512614
4. Each state pressed differently, 1967 to 1981. Singapore: federation 1967, firecracker bans 1970 and 1972. Indonesia: ban 1967 to 2000. Malaysia: permits and restriction, roughly 1969 to 1990. Hong Kong: the 1981 licensing law. Vietnam: the Hoa exodus of 1978 to 1979, a likely but undocumented route for lion people to other countries.¹²⁷
5. Competition split the lion again, 1983 to 1995. Malaysian contests and poles (1983), the Hong Kong and Macau television contest (1984, one account), Guangzhou's association and first rules (1985, 1986), the Hong Kong invitational where Malaysian poles met Hong Kong and Chinese masters (1992), the pole standard (1993), Genting (1994), and the IDLDF, registered in Hong Kong (January 1995), with its secretariat moving to Beijing (July 1997).
6. Heritage and sport status, 2000 onward. Indonesia's ban lifted (2000), China's list (2006), Malaysia's pole lion (2007), Hong Kong's inventory (2014), Singapore's inventory (2018), Vietnam's list (2017 for the Tày and Nùng cat-lion,¹²⁸ 2025 for the Hoa lion), Malaysia's whole-dance register (2025).

Sources: the sections above; mainland entries from a 2023 newspaper, the national register and a 2025 news report.^1412919

What each place pushed forward

These readings are this guide's synthesis, not a quotation of any one source.

• Sport. Malaysia pushed the lion furthest into sport: the metal pole array, 10-point scoring, Genting and a global circuit that Indonesia and Vietnam now copy. The mainland built its own system in parallel (1986 rules, 1995 association, 2011 international rules) and, in Chinese sources' account, imported the pole lion from Malaysia. Hong Kong supplied the meeting place, and Singapore now supplies the champions.
• Ritual. Hong Kong and Singapore kept the old forms through licence: ground cheng, set formations, and home cai qing under a permit and timetable. Vietnam kept ritual and play together, with Ông Địa, Tết and children's Trung Thu troupes. Indonesia is the opposite case, where the federation's own officer says the old blessing ceremony has gone from the sport side.
• Identity. Malaysia's lion first stood for survival of Chinese culture, then for national unity; Indonesia's, after the ban, stands for freedom and has mostly non-Chinese dancers; Singapore's carries clan-hall history into a multi-ethnic scene; Vietnam's is officially a Hoa art.
• Heritage. Every place has a register entry or a path to one, at different reach: mainland national ICH (2006), Hong Kong inventory only (2014), Malaysia's pole lion (2007) and whole dance (2025), Singapore inventory (2018), Vietnam's Hoa lion (2025). Indonesia's status could not be confirmed, and UNESCO has no standalone lion dance listing.^672983103

The flow of ideas was circular. Poles went from Malaysia to Hong Kong in 1992 and then to China, and later to Vietnam and Indonesia through contests, discs and trainers. Cheng layouts went the other way, from Hong Kong and Macau masters to the mainland. Fo-He was made in Singapore, the fast Lo Leung drum was shaped by Hong Kong television, and Sar Ping reached the United States through Singapore and Malaysia (Chapter 13).¹⁴³³⁷³

Ha Kwok Cheung, the Lion King, and Yau Kung Mun

Short version: 夏國璋/夏国璋 (Ha Kwok Cheung; Cant. haa6 gwok3 zoeng1, Mand. Xià Guózhāng) was the son of the man who took the martial art Yau Kung Mun public, and in Hong Kong he carried the title "lion king" (獅王/狮王, Cant. si1 wong4, Mand. shīwáng). He is the second name in a four-generation family that still runs a Hong Kong lion troupe. Yau Kung Mun (柔功門/柔功门, Cant. jau4 gung1 mun4, Mand. Róugōngmén) is a southern kung fu system, and the Australian branch's website lists the family troupe as the Hong Kong arm of the art.¹² Chinese Wikipedia fills in the outline. He lived from 1928 to 2004 and was a bone-setting doctor, qualified in 1960, who took over his father's club in 1962. He was vice-president of the Hong Kong Wushu Union and was honoured by the Queen in 1978 and by the Hong Kong SAR in 2002. It credits him with creating the southern lion with northern moves (南獅北舞).²¹ No film credit was found, and no account of which contest first earned him the title.

The family, generation by generation

The family list puts Ha Dak Gin between Ha Kwok Cheung and Ha Ging Man, and Chinese Wikipedia now says it outright: Ha Dak Gin is the eldest son and Ha Ging Man a grandson.²¹ A separate source supports the first link: a 2025 Hong Kong news report on the paper-craft master 夏中建 (Ha Zung Gin; Cant. haa6 zung1 gin3, Mand. Xià Zhōngjiàn) says his grandfather was the Yau Kung Mun head Ha Hon Hung and his father, Ha Kwok Cheung, held the lion king title.⁴ That report is about paper crafts, not lion dance. Ouyang Xiuming's own place in the line is not spelled out. The Nanfang+ report says she was born into a martial arts family, trained under her father, practised lion-dance drumming with her mother and joined the troupe in her early teens, and says she took the troupe over, but it gives no year for that and does not say how she is related to Ha Ging Man or the Ha family.²³ The report does not mention Ha Ging Man, and the troupe's own text, as reproduced on its Australian branch's site, does not mention her.²³²

Who founded Yau Kung Mun, and when

What is documented is the public founding. Wikipedia, a San Francisco city resolution and a KQED report all date the art's introduction to the public to 1924, by Ha Hon Hung.³¹⁸ Wikipedia adds that he came from Ko Ming in Guangdong (which is read as Gaoming), taught in Guangzhou, moved to Hong Kong after the 1949 Communist takeover, and died in 1965.³ The art's own story is much older.

Why "lion king"?

Four kinds of source use the title or something close to it. A 2025 news report says Ha Kwok Cheung held it.⁴ A New TV feature describes the family's heirs as inheritors of a "lion king of a generation" (一代獅王, Cant. jat1 doi6 si1 wong4, Mand. yī dài shīwáng), and a second TV feature uses the same phrase in its title. Neither description names him, though the troupe carries his name.⁵⁶ A South China Morning Post profile, undated, labels him the lion dance "king" of Hong Kong.⁹ China News Service says the troupe is called the "world lion king" because it won 11 world lion-king contest titles.⁷ None of them says which contest or year gave him the title, so it reads as a reputation, not a dated award. Chinese Wikipedia ties the reputation to his southern-lion-with-northern-moves technique. A 2024 Guangdong report dates that change to the 1980s and says he shortened the lion's cloth and set southern lion technique to northern lion choreography.²¹²³

The Post profile, taken here to be about the same man because the name and the lion-king label match, shows the working life as far as its excerpts could be read. His father began teaching him lion and dragon dance at four. He ran a bone-setting and acupuncture practice in Sheung Wan, helped run seven martial arts clubs, averaged about 30 dance bookings a month, and could have up to 15 functions in a day at Lunar New Year. He said lion teams must be trained in kung fu to dance properly.⁹

The troupe today, and film and television

The troupe is the 夏國璋龍獅團/夏国璋龙狮团 (Ha Kwok Cheung Dragon and Lion Dance Team; Cant. haa6 gwok3 zoeng1 lung4 si1 tyun4, Mand. Xià Guózhāng lóngshī tuán). It says it started in 1924, has a service motto about trusted reputation and constant improvement, and has a modern "Hip Hop Lion Dance" with pop music in place of the traditional instruments.² In 2022 it danced 18 lions at West Kowloon high-speed rail station for the 25th anniversary of the handover. For the 1997 handover itself, Chinese Wikipedia says the family fielded 750 people, about 100 lions and more than 20 dragons at the Wan Chai convention centre.²¹ Since 2010 the troupe has worked in Shanghai. Ouyang Xiuming says that move was her own decision: she rented a flat in Shanghai, called on Hong Kong-owned firms to offer performances, and after more than ten years of trying judged the route right.²³ The report's opening says the troupe launched the World Lion King Heroes Gathering (世界獅王英雄匯/世界狮王英雄汇, Cant. sai3 gaai3 si1 wong4 jing1 hung4 wui6, Mand. shìjiè shīwáng yīngxióng huì) in Shanghai, and she says further editions would follow in Hong Kong and Foshan in the troupe's centenary year, counted from 1924.²³ She credits the fourth generation with a stage-oriented Hip Hop Lion Dance that some older masters first criticised, and says each generation has had to "break the old and set up the new" (破舊立新/破旧立新, Cant. po3 gau6 laap6 san1, Mand. pòjiù lìxīn).²³ Since 2021 it has opened bases in Zhaoqing, Gaoming, Zhuhai and Foshan, where its Lion Dancer Dream Factory (獅人夢工場/狮人梦工场) was due to open in July 2024. Chapter 20 covers that business.²³⁷ The family on camera: New TV feature on the Ha Kwok Cheung troupe @ 0:00 (no transcript, so its contents are not timed).⁵

No film or television credit for Ha Kwok Cheung or the troupe was found, only the two TV features and the paper-craft report above.⁵⁶⁴ If film work matters, ask the troupe or search the Hong Kong Film Archive.

Yau Kung Mun abroad

Which lion does Yau Kung Mun dance?

Everything points to a southern lion, but the labels differ. KQED says the San Francisco school teaches the Nam Si Buk Mo lion dance style, which is 南獅北舞/南狮北舞 (Cant. naam4 si1 bak1 mou5, Mand. nánshī běiwǔ), the southern lion with northern moves described earlier in this chapter.⁸ The city resolution calls the system a gold standard in both northern and southern lion dance, which is the club's own claim.¹ Wikipedia says the Australian branch was among the first Chinese martial arts groups there to perform both lions in public, while the branch's class listings say traditional southern lion.³²

What the lineage did for the Hong Kong lion scene

Less than the name suggests, on the evidence found. No source credits Yau Kung Mun with a named Hong Kong lion style. What can be documented is a family troupe that pairs kung fu training with a heavy booking schedule, school and community outreach and a pop-music variant, plus the spread of the art to San Francisco and Sydney through Ha Hon Hung's and Ha Kwok Cheung's students.⁹⁷² Wikipedia counts about fifteen Yau Kung Moon schools in Hong Kong, so it is one strand of the scene, not the whole.³

Lo Leung and the Macau roots of Hong Kong style

The About page of On Ngai Sport Association, a US team, says that what is now called Hong Kong style actually began in Macau, where the Macau Lo Leung Sport Association developed it before it spread to Hong Kong. It adds that Lo Leung first showed the style at a 1984 TVB lion dance competition, with a hallmark drum called 遍地金錢/遍地金钱 (Cant. pin3 dei6 gam1 cin2, Mand. biàn dì jīnqián, "money all over the ground").¹⁴ The Macau and 1984 parts have some support. The claim that Hong Kong style began there does not.

What "Lo Leung" means

羅梁/罗梁 (Cant. lo4 loeng4, Mand. Luó Liáng) is two surnames joined. They belong to the sworn brothers 羅悅勝/罗悦胜 (Lo Yuet Sing; Cant. lo4 jyut6 sing3) and 梁國榮/梁国荣 (Leung Kwok Wing; Cant. loeng4 gwok3 wing4), who each opened martial halls in Guangdong in the 1930s and fled the Japanese invasion to Macau. Their Lo Leung Brothers' martial arts troupe dates from 1938 and became the Lo Leung Athletic Association (羅梁體育總會/罗梁体育总会) in 1948.¹⁵¹⁶ A 2024 Zhongshan newspaper feature stresses that the association is in Macau today but began on the mainland.¹⁵ The same name is used for the lion and drum style that came out of that association, as in "Lo Leung drum" (羅梁鼓, Cant. lo4 loeng4 gu2). Details of that drum are in Chapter 7.

The On Ngai head coach says he learned Lo Leung from a sifu he names as Lau Yiu Lam, who owned the Lau Yiu Kee lion-head business and first taught him two movements in 2016, and he calls his team the first Lo Leung team in the United States.¹⁴ No independent record of that sifu or his shop was found.

The claim, checked

Do not confuse the drum name with 遍地生財/遍地生财 (Cant. pin3 dei6 saang1 coi4), the phrase for the lion spitting out the lettuce so that wealth spreads everywhere (see Chapter 10). For the 1984 contest in more detail, see Macau and the 1984 Hilton contest above.

Sources for this section

1. Resolution No. 285-26, San Francisco Board of Supervisors, adopted 12 May 2026 (Yau Kung Moon Day) - City and County of San Francisco, English, municipal resolution (scanned PDF, read with text recognition)
2. Our legacy - Yau Kung Mun Australia, English and Traditional Chinese, branch website that reproduces the Hong Kong troupe's own introduction; self-reported (the same pages also appear at ykm.com.au/about)
3. Yau Kung Moon - Wikipedia, English, encyclopedia; the origin and style sections carry no citations
4. HK01 report on the paper-craft master Ha Zung Gin and the TVB Plus programme, 14 Oct 2025 - HK01, Simplified Chinese, news report
5. New TV feature on the Ha Kwok Cheung troupe (episode 10 of the arts series) @ 0:00 - New TV, Traditional Chinese, TV feature (6:57); facts are from the video description, no transcript available
6. Hong Kong Stories feature on the "lion king of a generation" @ 0:00 - Tongshi (通視), Chinese, TV feature (8:32); facts are from the video description, no transcript available
7. China News Service video on Hong Kong lion dancers @ 0:00 - China News Service, Simplified Chinese, state media video (4:36); facts are from the video description, no transcript available
8. Yau Kung Moon school brings joy to Chinatown with Lunar New Year performances, 18 Feb 2022 - KQED, English, public radio report
9. Parallel lives (profile of Ha Kwok-cheung) - South China Morning Post, English, newspaper profile, undated; the page returned an access error, so details come from search-result excerpts only
10. Report on the 14th Genting World Lion Dance Championship, 6 Aug 2023 - Sin Chew Daily, Simplified Chinese, newspaper (names an American Yau Kung Mun team as a Western Lion King winner)
11. Georges River lion dance and dragon eye dotting ceremony - The Leader, English, local newspaper; seen only as a search excerpt, page not opened
12. New South Wales parliament speech posted on markcoure.com.au - English, state parliament speech on a member's website; seen only as a search excerpt, page not opened
13. David Lei lecture on Chinese lion dance @ 21:52 - YouTube, English, lecture (93 min), automatic captions
14. About - On Ngai Lion and Dragon Dance Sport Association, English, team website; self-reported
15. Zhongshan Lo Leung lion feature, 21 Dec 2024 - Zhongshan Plus (zsnews.cn), Simplified Chinese, city newspaper
16. Macau Lo Leung Athletic Association, 20 Aug 2016 - People's Daily Overseas Edition, Simplified Chinese, national newspaper
17. Association history and timeline - Hong Kong Chinese Martial Arts Dragon and Lion Dance Association, Traditional Chinese, association website; self-reported
18. Lion dance page - Hong Kong Chinese Martial Arts Dragon and Lion Dance Association, Traditional Chinese, association website; self-reported
19. Hong Kong lion art book launch (2017) @ 0:00 - YouTube, Cantonese, book launch video; the claim is from the book's blurb as read in the video description
20. Traditional Lion Dance Drumming Lesson #1 @ 03:29 - Hawaii Lion Dance Association, English, tutorial; captions garbled
21. Chinese Wikipedia, 夏國璋 (香港), revision of 29 Sep 2026 - Traditional Chinese, encyclopedia; its one cited source is the troupe's website
22. Chinese Wikipedia, 夏漢雄 - Traditional Chinese, encyclopedia; notes that some sources date the club to 1924 and others to 1949
23. Nanfang+ (Southern Daily), "夏国璋龙狮团第四代主理人欧阳秀明：盼更多“雄狮少年”入行", 19 May 2024 - Simplified Chinese, newspaper
24. LionDanceMe (Yau Kung Moon USA), Facebook page, posts of 26 Sep 2024 and 25 Dec 2025 - English, social media
25. Mission Local, "The world's most active lion dance group facing blowback in San Francisco's Chinatown", Apr 2024 - English, local news
26. City of Sydney What's On, "Performance with Lion Dance Kids" (2025) - English, city events listing
27. Lion Dance Kids 柔功門, Facebook page, posts of 27 Jul and 28 Aug 2026 on Andrew Yap's Sydney visit - English and Chinese, social media
28. "中马狮王争霸赛丨2金1铜载誉而归来", RedNote post by the troupe's Foshan base (狮人梦工场), 22 Sep 2026 - Chinese, social media (RedNote shows posts only to signed-in users)
29. 龍獅文化 醫武結合 延續兩大中華瑰寶 ──夏國璋龍獅團第三代掌門人夏德建醫師 @ 0:00 - 橘井傳香文化傳播, Cantonese, 31 Jul 2023 (facts from the description; no captions)