By Beatrice Lee, bostonese.com columnist
In the morning of Jan. 24, I was debating whether I wanted to go to Chinese American Association of Lexington’s (CAAL) Chinese New Year celebration or not. The ride decided for me as I could not change the time. I’m glad that I did. I probably was among the very first ones getting there. They were still trying to set up the place.
(from left)Peter Lee, Weidong Wang, Melanie Lin and Hua Wang of CAAL pose for a picture.
The Cary Memorial Library was filled with Chinese New Year festivity atmosphere. All the decorations were significantly beautiful. They really did a great job for the event. I was so proud of all the committee. Peter Lee, my youngest son was one of them. I met Sophia Ho, Jenny Yao, Weidong Wang, Li-Yin Wu, Eileen Jay and other old friends.
The Dragon dance was wonderful, and our younger generation grandson Garrett was in it. Certainly it was great to see the third generation following parents involving community events . Adult must be a good role model for them. Teaching is one thing, wanting to do them is another matter.
It was nice to see those Mainland Chinese people, young and old, volunteering at the table doing a “Great job ” — arts and crafts, translating names from English to Chinese, making little animals from the dough for the kids. Except they make so much noise for the musical performance, Chinese Calligraphy exhibit. That’s no respect for the artist.
I didn’t get any food from the other room where Sophia was. Too many people were digging in. As Jiliana said “luckily it was a snowing day or else the place would be busted.”
The evening program was wonderful too. I am so proud of my son Peter Lee was the MC for the program. Of course his English is plenty good enough, his Taiwanese Chinese is okay also, but his partner’s Beijing Chinese was much superior than his pronunciation.
Of all the fantastic programs tonight, naturally I like the two best one were The Szechuan opera magic “Changing Face”and my grandson Ryan Lee and his buddy’s yo-yo. (I am partial to him, of course) . Honestly and really ,the super duper show should be the Calligraphy Exhibition and Gu Zheng solo by artists Jason Tan ( from Montreal ) and Shin-Yi Yang. I have heard her playing many, many times and never get tired of it, but you never heard her this way: Accompanying the music is a demonstration of semi-cursive or running script, a core Chinese calligraphic style with free movements.
Thanks for my junior high Chinese teacher in Chungking Nankai that I still remember that Tang poem vividly. Actually all of the programs that night were super. How could they possibly invited all of those fantastic people to do the night’s program? They even went without intermission.
Due to the bad weather, I am so glad that they did not cancel the whole thing (they almost did). Lexington town cleaned out the parking lot. They usually don’t do it on the weekends. I guess 25% of the towns people are Asian that made a big difference. Man power and they have voice.