Building our Singapore together, one Chingay at a time

Fan Dong Kai and Sam Lo are Artistic Director and Art Director of Singapore’s annual Chingay festivities.

“My first Chingay parade was… 33 years ago,” says Fan Dong Kai after some quick calculation.

Dong Kai grew up in China’s Fujian province, studied at the Beijing Dance Academy, and choreographed at the Houston Ballet Academy before moving to Singapore. He joined the People’s Association (PA) as a choreographer in 1992 and was appointed Artistic Director of Chingay in 2003.

Singapore’s annual Chingay Parade debuted in 1973 as a Chinese New Year event and has since evolved into an extravaganza that transcends age, ethnicity, and language, bringing Singaporeans together to celebrate multiculturalism as one community.

Image courtesy of Dong Kai.

Dong Kai has been choreographing Singapore’s annual Chingay Parade since the early 1990s.

Learning to connect with the community

Choreographing Chingay’s thousands of performers — who range from amateurs to seasoned professionals — was a culture shock for Dong Kai at first.

“I struggled to work with the community because I was used to companies full of professionals,” he recalls, “but what do you do when some people don’t even know how to count in time with music?”

Dong Kai’s perfectionism was drilled into him at a young age. In the 1970s, arts academies in China scoured schools to recruit new talent.

While he occasionally misses performing, Dong Kai is delighted whenever he hears his performers cheered by audiences from backstage.

“One day the recruiters came during recess and measured my height and the length of my arms and legs, to see if I would grow into a dancer’s body,” he recalls.

Dong Kai became one of only a handful of students in his city selected. After years of rigorous training, a magazine article and TV appearance would catapult him to stardom and land him a job as a principal dancer.

“I always wanted to be the best,” Dong Kai says. However by the age of 22, he felt he had hit his physical peak as a dancer and decided to compete for a spot in a new choreography programme.

Images courtesy of Dong Kai

Dong Kai spent years perfecting his craft as a dancer and choreographer.

Dong Kai says being a choreographer means “always questioning yourself and what’s possible, so you can make something new out of nothing.”

Watching him stroll through a mostly empty parade ground between rehearsals, it becomes clear that mounting a massive spectacle like Chingay — which must blend countless disparate elements from lion dancers to hip hop artists — is a leap of faith until everything finally comes together at showtime.

“The results might not be exactly what I imagined, but I’ve learned to make it work,” he says, “after a few years I realised the most important part of Chingay is how it helped me understand what Singapore society really is.”

Chingay helped Dong Kai — who had been intensively trained to pursue personal excellence — to embrace the diversity of experiences and abilities among its community of performers, instead of seeing it as a shortcoming. His Chingay Parades, as a result, are always greater than the mere sum of their many, many components.

“I’ve grown to appreciate all of Singapore’s different cultures, and to enjoy seeing everyone learn about each other’s backgrounds.”

Celebrating everyone’s contributions

Working on Chingay has brought creatives from all walks of life into Dong Kai’s orbit. Luminaries such as the composer Iskandar Ismail and Malay dance choreographer Osman Abdul Hamid were not only frequent collaborators, but also good friends.

“Back when Chingay was smaller, there was no composer: I was splicing cassettes and burning CDs myself,” Dong Kai recalls, “however at a certain point I realised my abilities had limits, and that I needed other people to help me build a better parade.”

One of Dong Kai’s newest creative partners is street artist Sam Lo, whose first Chingay was in 2022.

Dong Kai talks to an artist working on PAssionArts Street, a complement to the Chingay Parade where sculptures made by the community are presented together to tell a story. This year’s theme reflects the joys of food — not only in eating, but also in sharing.

Sam — who describes himself as an accidental artist — first rose to prominence through colloquial stickers and street-based artworks designed to promote his online platform for local creatives.

The artworks instead became a statement of their own… and attracted the attention of the authorities. “I was arrested one day and called a ‘vandal’,” he recalls, “then the next day, newspapers were calling me a ‘street artist’. I asked myself, ‘What am I?’”

Sam grew to embrace the street artist title, and in 2022 was invited by PA to design and paint a traveling bus for Chingay’s 50th anniversary. “Because of the pandemic they couldn’t have a full parade,” he explains. The buses were ‘reimagined Chingay floats’ that offered commuters unique in-bus experiences to ‘bring cheer to residents all around the island’.

Images courtesy of Sam Lo

Sam’s Chingay50 Bus from 2022, and 2023’s shipping container art installation; spin-off container artworks painted by the community would later plant the seed for PAssionArts Street.

Dong Kai was impressed by Sam’s work and asked him to formally join Chingay as Art Director the following year: “‘This is the one’, I thought. I didn’t want a square. I wanted someone who could think outside the box.”

Sam’s role as Art Director sees him curate community art installations and design promotional visuals for Chingay inspired by the year’s theme.

Sam inspects one of PAssionArt Street’s food-themed sculptures: “I think it's beautiful how much effort everyone puts in, and how it all comes together in this melting pot.”

His previous work with commercial clients had primed him to expect a certain dynamic with Chingay’s organisers. “But I was blown away by how far Dong Kai pushed me,” Sam says, “I would ask if he was sure about something and he’d tell me to dream big and 突破 (túpò, or break through), which I don't hear a lot from clients.”

While researching Chingay’s archives, Sam was struck by an old photograph of a performer dressed as the Chinese God Of Wealth astride a flamingo. “That was wild, man,” Sam laughs, “I told myself that if they were down for this, I could really push myself.”

Image courtesy of Sam Lo.

PAssionArts Street debuted in 2024, with community artworks inspired by the year’s floral themes.

Caring is sharing JOY

Through the years, Chingay has only grown in scale and ambition.

When Dong Kai first joined, the Chingay Parade had no themes and every contingent “did its own thing. It was quite unstructured, free and easy.” In the 2000s, he began creating opening choreography for everyone and used common music to unify the different dance troupes.

Annual themes were only introduced when the F1 Pit Building became Chingay’s new home. “We started adding dramatic elements and special effects,” Dong Kai says, “themes helped us tie everything together, from floats to costume designs and musical compositions.”

Every modern Chingay parade tells a story and has central characters such as 2024’s Flower Fairy (the theme for that year was ‘Blossom’). 2025’s theme is JOY and uses food imagery to symbolise Singapore’s community spirit.

Sam’s key visual for Chingay, for example, depicts a cascade flowing between cups, bowls, and claypots to illustrate how food connects people.

Sam, who mostly used to work from project to project, credits Dong Kai for pushing him to consistently build upon past work, as well as to think beyond two dimensions.

With large, inflatable food adorning parade-ground scaffolds; colourful floats representing Singapore’s iconic dishes; and a “char siu bao dance costume that tears off into roti” which Dong Kai is particularly excited for, Chingay 2025 promises to be a feast for the eyes and ears, if not the palate.

Working on Chingay continues to inspire Sam and Dong Kai, whose enthusiasm deepens with each new year.

“Going from ‘vandal’ to working on Chingay was a big jump personally,” Sam says, “for many years I craved recognition on a national level, so for people to see me for the work I create now and not just my past is a big honour.”

For Sam, whose earlier works were mislabeled by some as ‘anti-establishment’, joining a community institution like Chingay brought him closer to the “tapestry of what Singapore is”.

“I can't really say exactly what Chingay means for all Singaporeans, but I think it brings people together,” he continues, “I've seen the same faces come back every year since I’ve started: there has got to be something that we're doing right.”

After 33 years of choreographing Chingay, people frequently ask Dong Kai if he ever gets bored. His answer is always an emphatic no.

“I am grateful to have a big platform that can reach everyone from Cabinet ministers to school children,” he reflects, “Every year I get to find new ideas and new partners to work with. Not everyone can have this opportunity, and for so long.”

“Chingay is my life.”

Chingay 2025 will take place on 7 and 8 February 2025 at the F1 Pit Building. Although tickets have sold out, you can still visit the Free Admission area including PAssionArts Street@Chingay!

Chingay’s floats and stunning performances will also be coming to a neighbourhood near you as part of the Chingay@Heartlands Celebrations: visit Chingay’s website to find out more details.