AP PHOTOS: Indonesia welcomes the Year of the Snake with dragon puppets and drum displays

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — From narrow side streets to packed malls, the traditional music and dance of dragon puppet performances have filled Indonesia’s bustling capital of Jakarta to usher in the Lunar New Year.

Asian communities across the world will begin ringing in the Lunar New Year on Jan. 29, with 2025 designated as the Year of the Snake in the Chinese zodiac. Fireworks, parades and other Lunar New Year rituals are centered around removing bad luck and welcoming prosperity.

In Indonesia, where millions of people have Chinese ancestry, crowds gathered to watch as drummers interspersed around puppet performers display the traditional dragon and lion puppets, which stretched up to 65 feet (20 meters) long in interconnected segments held by about a dozen people walking beneath.

For weeks before the Lunar New Year festivities, the performance troupe — which can number anywhere from 50 to 100 people depending on how in-demand shows are — practice in the abandoned back area of a small storefront selling coffee and snacks. Women and children from around the area stop by to sit and watch. During slower weeks puppet heads sit unused on a storage shelf.

On Sunday, days before the start of the Lunar New Year, the troupe loaded puppets and performers into the back of a small truck and headed to a shopping mall for a performance. Those who couldn’t fit into the truck followed on motorbikes.

In the mall, hundreds of visitors gathered to listen to the drums and watch the dance of the performance troupe. Rounds of applause greeted the dance, while some in the audience placed “angpau” — an envelope containing money usually given during holidays or for special occasions — into the puppet’s mouth.