Las Vegas Weekly

January 26, 2009 · 11:03 AM

Photo Gallery: Lion and dragon dances welcome Chinese New Year and the Year of the Ox

By Robin Leach

Photo: The Venetian

Our town has thrown out the welcome mat for our Chinese friends as they celebrate their New Year! Celebrations for The Year of the Ox began over the weekend and go full force today. (The ox is the second animal in the Asian zodiac and is a symbol of prosperity, self-assurance, inspiration and leadership.)

One of the best and most respected martial arts, dragon and lion dance organizations in the world with more than 3,000 members, Yau Kung Moon kicked off MGM’s celebrations. Yau Kung Moon was the first U.S. team to compete in the 1990 World Lion Dance Festival in Malaysia and finished undefeated seven times in the Chinese National Lion Dance Championships. Grandmaster Ha Kwok Cheung’s disciples, grandmasters Chan Chuen, Wong Cheung and Wan Tak Kee, introduced them to America in the 1960s. Award-winning singer-actor Leehom Wang also performed at MGM over the weekend.

Today, Yau Kung Moon performs the traditional dances at Mandalay Bay’s entrance at 3 p.m. with drums and gongs and at The Mirage at 6 p.m. and tomorrow at the Bellagio at 7 p.m. It is truly a colorful explosion of costumes, music and dance that should be seen to be believed, complete with firecrackers!

The Venetian and the Palazzo atriums and lobbies have been festooned in red and gold with traditional tangerine trees complete with red money envelopes! There’s a 12-foot, hand-sculpted golden ox, 25-foot bamboo canes in gold-leafed vases and 6-feet-tall I Ching coin tributes. To symbolize good luck and prosperity for the New Year, there were dragon and lion dances over the weekend from The Venetian entrance to the Palazzo lobby.

Photo: The Venetian

The Chinese consider dragons to be friendly and helpful creatures providing strength, good fortune, wisdom and longevity. Lions are seen as guardians and exorcize evil spirits and bring luck and fortune.

Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck honors the Year of the Ox with a weeklong Chinese New Year dinner at Chinois in Caesars Palace. His $55 five-course feast includes tea and tangerine-glazed quail and lobster pot stickers in the shape of Chinese currency, braised oxtail soup for prosperity, chili prawns for longevity, whole roasted Cantonese duck to symbolize family togetherness, and pineapple sticky cake and tangerine sorbet because the Cantonese word for tangerine sounds like “luck and wealth”!

Photo: The Venetian

Happy Chinese New Year to all our friends!

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