起狮，行礼(Rising Lion — The Lion Bows) and七星鼓(Seven Star Drum) — Author's Notes

 

The titles of both of these stories are taken from lion dance "moves" or sequences, which you can see if you feed the Chinese characters into YouTube. I realized after it was published that Rising Lion — The Lion Bows is kind of a fiddly title to remember if you don't speak Chinese (it is neater in Chinese), but by then it was too late to re-name the story.

I had a hard time at university for various reasons, and joining the lion dance troupe in second year was one of the things that helped turn it round. You could be useful from the beginning, even if you didn't know very much — after all, anyone with half a sense of rhythm can clash a pair of cymbals together — and it combined learning new skills with being part of something out of the everyday. I'd seen lion dance before but hadn't thought of it as something people who weren't acrobats could do.

The other thing that went into 起狮，行礼 was non-white people in old European paintings. There are lots of such paintings, and many stories about people of colour who ended up in the UK through slavery or war or some other cataclysm, long before the Windrush. They built communities, but doubtless many of them still felt lonely. Because the story came out of a feeling of loneliness, it is about finding friendship.

七星鼓 is backstory that I cut from 起狮，行礼, but I like Boris, so I cleaned it up and posted it online. Someone asked me why Boris is drinking and has abandoned lion dance in the story: was that meant to show he was depressed?

My interpretation is that Boris is drinking because he works in the City and it kind of comes with the territory, and he abandoned lion dance not only because he was beginning to wonder if it was right for the lion to devour ghosts, but because lion dance had given him what he needed from it, and now he could move on to the rest of his life. You're welcome to adopt the other interpretation if it makes sense to you, though.

 

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