My son strides on to the stage dressed in red robes and stares impassively at the crowd. He’s playing a wise monk and not, as his friend George had told us for several weeks, a ‘wise monkey’. Luckily, we had not yet started on his costume by the time this was clarified.
School productions have come on a bit since my day. For one thing, I don’t remember us marking the Chinese new year. I certainly don’t remember staging as fine as the Chinese village we see before us: painted pagodas, ribboned flags and even a charming recreation of Nian, the mythical lion whose banishment represents the transition from one year to the next, operated by two enthusiastic children playing its front and back, respectively.
