Christmas Island Kung Fu Association (Lion Dance Troupe)

About

The Christmas Island Kung Fu Association's Lion Dance Troupe is the sole lion dance group on Christmas Island — Australia's remote Indian Ocean territory located 2,600km northwest of Perth. The troupe is unique in Australia for several reasons: it performs lion dance at all five Buddhist temples on New Year's Day as a religious circuit; at midnight on New Year's Eve, association members conduct a two-hour island-wide drum and gong procession by pickup truck (requiring government permission) to drive away evil spirits; and Christmas Island is the only jurisdiction in all of Australia where Chinese New Year is a legally mandated public holiday — residents enjoy two days off. The community's Malaysian Chinese heritage gives the island's lion dance a distinctly Malaysian character, rooted in the traditions of the Hakka, Cantonese and Hokkien workers who came to mine phosphate from the 1970s. Historically, Christmas Island lion dance experience also seeded the mainland — Perth's Chung Wah Dragon & Lion Dance Troupe was originally founded in the late 1960s by Christmas Island engineering students who brought their lion dance skills with them.

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