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A few weeks back my school, Woo Ching White Crane, perormed for the Chinatown Main Street Festival. In addition to our usual crew we had two new guests. One was Master Moi, an elderly Kung Fu enthusiast who at his old age still performed three forms in heatstroke humid heat. (Perhaps I will write another article focusing on him.) But our most popular guest was Ika Hsiao, who performed yo-yo.

As we were waiting to perform, audience members starting going up to Ika baraging her with questions. Was she going to perform yo-yo? When? If she was perfoming then they would stay.

It is true that the audience ad probably seen several hours of Kung Fu and Lion Dance. But Chinese yo-yo is something I have not seen seriously performed in Boston since the early90’s. And although the girls performing it were quite flexible and could hold graceful poses, it took them a while to get enough spin to do tricks, and restarts were often necessary. They also performed to cassete tapes of Chinese music that were copied and recopied until the grainy scratchiness and inadvertent microphone percussion section was wince enducing.

Ika had not performed seriously (as in on a stage) herself since highschool. Never the less, she gave an extraordinary performance which started after our performance with the Lion head taking the yo-yo and then giving it to her. (Video is available on facebook and youtube I’ll try to get that link up later. I have never seen this done befoe, but I checked and I don’t think we broke any lion dancing rules. Although the old man I write about previously who was giving tips on the Tiger Fork left after were done. I actually forgot or was too tired to do the Tiger Fork at the end. If I did something wrong I suppose I will get a good scolding next time I see him.) But back to the yo-yo performances, which was accompanied by drums gong and cymbals. I tried to follow the yo-yos movements using the northern Chinese beats, which again, I guess are not supposed to be played on the southern lion dance drum. But t that point in the performance, we were’t lion dancing. The audience didn’t seemed to care about these details and adults and children alike were truly amazed and impressed. I must say I haven’t seen a better yo-yo player perform live.

My questions to why this was so were answered when I followed up about ow she learned yo-yo. It turns out, she used to be on a team of eight very acrobatic and flexible little girls who compete at performing yo-yo, in Taiwan. They would practice 6 hours a day and when shecompeted she won the all Taiwan championships in elementary school, middle school, and in highschool. Ika actually performed solo as well as in the group of eight.

Performing in Boston’s Chinatown I saw her transformed on the stage. The audience watching could really tell she was enjoying herself. She hadn’t had the oppurtunity to perform like this in such a long time. After all it’s not like she still practices for 6 hours. Instead her day job is restoring Classical Chinese paintings from the Sung Dynasty for the Museum of Fine Arts. She went to school and got her Masters degree for this art also in Taiwan, which I would imagine, probably has the best programs for that sort of thing in the world.

Upon watching the video together Ika exclaimed parts where she chose to do some risker tricks finally right there on the stage, tricks involving throwing up the yo-yo spinning around and catching it once again. Luckily for many audience members she has become addicted to the thrill of performing and will probably be joining our group again as a guest for the August 15th festival in Chinatown, or “August Moon”, though it is near the Chinese August Moon holiday which goes by the lunar calendar. In any event, it will be a party.

If you are interested in learning more about Chinese yo-yo Lion Dance, Kung Fu, Calligraphyor Custom Chinese paintings or restoration of Ancient Chinese paintings  you can contact me and I can put you in touch with the appropriate people.

781-888-0631

[2] acheung-whitecrane@hotmail.com