Inside a Saigon Studio Bringing Lion Dance Costumes to Life

“This passion for lions is in our blood. Many, many kids in the past dropped out of school or quit work just to go,” said Bành Chí Hùng, owner of Saigon’s Thuận Anh Hãng lion dance costume studio.

Unlike in the central region, where múa lân (lion dances) are most associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival, in Saigon they tend to be biggest during Tết. Still, the weeks leading up to the fall holiday keep him quite busy. Nearly all his waking hours are occupied by completing orders. Amidst this packed schedule, he invited Saigoneer to his Bình Hưng Hòa ward home studio to witness the process and some of the traditions lost.

Hùng (right) works alongside his team on the ground floor of his home, where nearly every wall and corner is occupied by lions.

Bamboo, rattan, and wire are meticulously assembled for the head’s frame before rice paper is glued on and left to harden before being hand-painted. The entire process takes up to five days, with another two required for the costume’s body. In total, they sell for VND5–7 million to buyers throughout the city and country, as well as overseas to France, the US, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, and elsewhere.

Careful planning and frame construction are essential to ensure the final lion meets client expectations.

Once the surface is completely dry, the color is added by hand.

Having spent practically his entire life surrounded by múa lân, Hùng has been able to observe trends and preferences in design shifts along with improvements in material quality. Newer lion head models have much lighter frames that are easier to lift. New glues are easier to paint on and thus allow for more intricate details and a wider range of vibrant colors. An influx of foreign influences has added Malay, Chinese, and Hong Kong patterns as well as facial features. But for Hùng, not everything new is better. “I prefer the traditional one more. The traditional one, looking at it, gives you a vintage lion feel.”

New designs are more colorful and complex than those Hùng grew up with.

While he has his preferences, Hùng must acquiesce to customer requests which can include new elements like stainless steel teeth and horns, and LED lights. One consistent feature remains, however, in the importance of the eye-dot. On an auspicious day, Hùng and his team make offerings and perform the dotting the pupil in the center of the eye. Anyone can take a lion home, but before it is truly ready for a dancing performance, especially in the south, it must receive the ceremony to ensure it has “spiritual energy, the soul.”

A head awaiting its important eye dot.

Completed heads ready to be delivered to customers.

“If my stuff is beautiful, people will copy it. If they see my stuff isn't beautiful, who would bother copying it?” quipped Hùng when surrounded by the colorful lion heads and costumes he has been making for nearly three decades. “The more people learn, the more people copy, the more valuable I am. Thanks to that, I must be proud of what makes you jealous of me, right?” he said with the confidence one deserves after international prizes and more annual orders than he can process.

While overshadowed by the lions, Ông Địa plays a crucial role in all performances and Hùng makes these masks as well.

Hùng makes somewhat traditional and more experimental versions.

While Hùng is one of the city’s most revered lion-head craftsmen, it wasn’t creating the costumes that first drew him in: “Honestly, when I was small, whenever I heard the drum beat, I would run out to watch. It's always been like that at home, hearing the drum beat, running out into the street to see where the drum was, where they were dancing.” His first and true passion is múa lân. After performing for many years, he began making costumes to use himself as mentored by previous generations. As he’s gotten too old to perform now, he focuses solely on crafting them as his business.

Performers nowadays rise to platforms far taller than in the past.

In the olden days, múa lân was a more creative, unique undertaking. “In the past, everyone had their own style. Now it's an international style,” with all teams in competitions and performances performing “the exact same routine.”

While they take the art seriously, the performers are not preparing for a fight.

As well as a standardization of rhythms and dance steps and an increase in the height of dance platforms, múa lân has lost a rambunctious violence that was once associated with it. Hùng explained that teams in a competition wouldn’t always be content to settle the matter through dance alone. “Two lion teams would meet, the drummers would hype things up, and they would fight — literally brawling. But if they played a respectful bowing drum cadence, both sides would bow to each other politely, and nothing would happen,” he said with a clear fondness for the rowdy moments. With a wistful tone he added, “All those brawls happened back then, but now they're gone. Today, official permits are even issued for sanctioned competitions.”

While it's just practice, the heights remain real and dangerous.

While Hùng’s costumes are frequently used in international competitions, they are also used for the year-round ceremonies that accompany grand openings, weddings, and other celebrations. The groups that perform these must be ready at any time if hired and thus practice year-round to remain ready.