EY Jina my assistant for the festival:) Smarty pants RGS, RJC student really good companion throughout the entire event, laughing,learning and pouring out our stories. Life won't be as good without you girl:)

Our first group of artist: Jing Chen, Chiao Wei, Liang ge, Shu-jen (Shi Mu:)) Lovely people who are friendly, caring, jovial banter of their obsession with the MERLION and gentlemenly demeanor . 10 days with them is like 10 days with family. They even invited jina and me to taiwan this october for visiting! We're flying over folks!

First night of CNY was spent at Waterfront Canopy Esplanade for stage set up and sound check.

was fortunate enough to catch new year's fireworks! Somehow the novelty wears off.....after viewing fireworks countless times for the past few years at the same location. But, still good:)

For an outdoor location, the performance was rather well-received! Every single day there were tons, both young and old crowded at the benches, filling up spaces once the stage lights went on and the puppetiers staged their comedy. Almost like england's "Punch and Judy" but it was more romeo and juliet style, in a mixture of English, Mandarin, cantonese, hokkien and french. YES, french! This group travels from spain to mexico to germany to europe and goodness knows which part of the world with their infamous LOVE's DESTINY performance. Chiao wei lends his animated voice for the entire performance, picking up an international language with simple phrases like Merci and thank you; paced with traditional hand sewn puppets and chinese music, it drew laughter and tears of mirth from our audience:)

Jing Chen teaching the kids hand puppetry tricks. Me and Jina had a go at it too! Fun, fun fun!!

CNA came over to film the crowd on the second day.

Look at these shoes! every hand-carved detail is amazing! Even the patterns on the puppet's clothes are hand-sewn by the troupe's Shi Fu- Li Chuang Tsian. He's a feisty, well-learned old man of 65 full of exhuberance and so willing to share his experience and knowledge with jina and myself. On the day we picked him up from the airport, the cab driver even asked for his autograph.

The audience were really captivated by the performance some came back for the 10 days of show! we had 2 performance time slots each day, 8pm-830pm and 930pm-10pm. There was a lady with a pet rabbit who came almost every day. Die-HART fan, really.

It was so crowded, there was a woman who apparently collided into a tree, bumped her head and fell onto the floor bleeding. First time i saw Front of House officers scrambling to her rescue like professional Rescue workers. What a night. An ambulance came shortly. What a night. i found out Front of House officers have to go through thorough First Aid training. Esplanade really takes no chances and equip their workers with ALL the necessary skills. i understand why they announce "you can now enjoy the performance in confidence and safety"