Singapore really is a festival city. They celebrate many festivals within a year, such as Chinese New Year, Moon Cake, Deepavali, Aidil Fitri, Christmas & New Year. A part of the city is always adorned with beautiful decorations during the festival. I was very lucky for having the chances to visit Singapore in two consecutive Septembers, when the Mooncake festival or Lantern Festival is usually being celebrated. The Festival is usually held in the Chinatown.
I upload some pics of Singapore's mooncake festival decorations (Sept 2007 & Sept 2008) in this blog and will write a bit about what mooncake festival is. Hope you enjoy them ...
Chinatown main road
Decoration 2007
Decoration 2008
Mooncake or Moon or Lantern or Mid-autumn festival or known in Chinese as Zhongqiu Jie (中秋節), is a harvest festival celebrated by Chinese people. Mooncake festival is usually celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month Chinese calendar. Therefore, according to the Solar calendar, the festival is always celebrated around mid or late September. This year the festival was celebrated on September 14th, 2008 and next year will be on October 3rd, 2009. As its name, the traditional food of this festival is the mooncake and you can expect to see paper lantern decorations during the festival. On that day, all the family members usually gather to have dinner and eat moon cakes together.
Paper lanterns
2007
2008
Others...
2007
2008
There are many versions of the moon festival legend. This is my mom’s version. Once upon a time, the earth had 10 suns. One day, the suns appeared together and burnt the earth. Then, the King ordered Hou Yi, a famous archer, to shoot down nine of the suns. Because Hou Yi succeeded in his task, the King rewarded him an eternal life medicine. He hid the medicine under a rafter. His wife, Chang Er, found and swallowed the medicine. After that, she noticed that she could fly and flew into the moon. Hou Yi was not able to bring his wife back to the earth. Then, he visits his wife once a year, on the 15th day of the 8th month Chinese calendar during full moon. Therefore, on that night, the moon is full and beautiful...
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