Chinese New Year Lion Dance # 2 (inside Melt in Mandarin Oriental)

More lion dances! You will see if you are in Singapore, during Chinese New Year, they are everywhere. You see them in shopping malls, in restaurants, in the apartment buildings, in the street, in work places, just everywhere! You can hear them coming with the drums and it can end up in a hunt for them. This one was during our champagne buffet brunch at Melt. This was set up for the lion to come in an eat. You have the auspicious mandarins, and some salad because of course he is hungry and a pineapple again for auspiciousness (a friend's favourite word at the moment, she is currently all about the auspicious!). 

Again, the mandarins.

And here comes the lion!

You can get the lion to come to your table and take pictures with him. You have to give him a red packet (only needs to have some small notes in - but they have to be new crisp notes. Luckily N had come prepared so she gave me one to give to the lion so we had him over twice, when N had her turn and then when I had mine!

So you can take pictures and everyone does:

And I followed him around the restaurant a bit for some more pictures:

And then I heard my friends shouting through the restaurant so I tried to come running but got stuck behind the lion!

This is when he played with the food. I was squealing as much as the kids who were lined up as he keeps darting forward at you to surprise you! And the drums get you into a bit of a frenzy :)

He dances around a bit, jumping at you, jumping back etc

He then tried to pick up the pineapple, throw it in the air and catch it in his mouth as this is auspicious.

Here he is using his foot to hold the pineapple in place.

This picture scares me a bit!

Darting forward and eating the stuff on the plate

All the kids putting the red packets in his mouth

All the kids fascinated by the mess being made with the lettuce and tomatoes going all over the place!

Pat a lion on the head

It all got a bit chaotic as you can tell by the rest of the pictures :)