Hello guys! Welcome to the second part of my Mid-Autumn Festival post (if you missed the first post, click here!). This post contains tons of beautiful picture taken by me, so be ready to indulge your vision!
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| Mid-Autumn Festival card given by my floor-mate in dorm. Lovely! |
The Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated on 15 September 2016. However, there are list of activities and events that started since the beginning of September, one of those is the lantern display carnival which showcasing an incredible variety of colorful, bright shiny lanterns.
There are different places showing different theme of lanterns in Hong Kong. In Tsim Sha Tsui, they got the Fly Me to The Moon as the theme. In Tai Po Waterfront Park, it's all about After the Mid-Autumn Night’s Dream. I didn't go to those two places, but I enjoyed the lantern carnival in Victoria Park.
I went to the lantern carnival on 14 September with a group of exchange students and four local students (who arranged the activity for us, thank you! :). Before we go to see the lantern, first thing first, EAT! We had our Chinese banquet dinner first at a small restaurant near Lok Fu Station (樂富). The restaurant was fully packed. I guess many people were eating out to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with their family. However, because the local students managed to book the tables beforehand, we could fit 20 people in two tables :)
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| The sign board of the restaurant: 興合聯 (xìng hé lián) |
We had 9 dishes served on each table: corn fish soup, marinated goose slices, deep fried cuttlefish, deep fried shrimp ball, braised eggplant and minced fish in pot, spare ribs in brown sauce, beef and vermicelli satay sauce in pot, yeung chow fried rice and dry fried flat noodle. It was a very good dinner. My favorite was the yeung chow fried rice as it got many eggs and ham! :9
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| Spot my fave! |
How to get to Victoria Park
Take the MTR, alight at Tin Hau Station and head to exit A2. Then, turn left, cross the road and you're arrived.
A Moonlit Night in the Fairyland
When I arrived at Victoria Park, I was amazed with the sparkling light all over places. There were lights hanging from one pole to the other poles in many different colors and the Chinese lantern were complementing the brightness with its bold red. The dark sky of Victoria Park was transformed to be a beautiful bright night!
As the theme in Victoria Park was about fairyland, aside from those traditional shaped lantern, they also had the modern lantern shaped in your bedtime stories characters: Cinderella, Rabbit and Turtle, Little Red Riding Hood, The Frog Prince and Three Little Pigs -('(oo)')-
In my opinion, this lantern carnival could be enjoyed by everyone because they can relate tho the simple theme. Children know all these characters as the grow up with these fairytales while parents know the stories as they read the books for their kids and tell them the morale behind each story. Therefore, there were so many people queuing to take pictures with each of those lantern in every age: kids, teens, couples, husband and wife, and the grandma grandpa with their grandchildren.
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| Mandatory monkey lanterns as 2016 is the year of monkey! |
After enjoying the lanterns, we had a little evening picnic which was prepared by the local students. We sat on a circle and they provided us some light-sticks (phosphor sticks). We also got some pack of chips, mooncakes and also several type of fruits. I tried a fruit called persimmon. It looks like tomato, but the color is light orange rather than red. I never eat it in Indonesia (not sure whether we got it or not in Indonesia). It surprisingly tastes good! It's sweet but not too sweet. My new addition to list of favorite fruits!
The local students were sooooo sweet. They checked the birthday of each of us on Facebook and prepared a little surprise for two of the exchange students that will have birthday on the upcoming September. They gave them a little cake which then we share together. Lovely!
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| Persimmon! |
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| My roommate Katie (Czech Republic) and Margaret (local student) |
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| André Eschmann (birthday boy from German) and Kim Mino (South Korea) |
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| Quick blurry selfie with Korean oppa, Kim Geunwoo, and Taiwanese student, Howard |
On 15 September, I went again to the Victoria Park to see the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance. It's a traditional dance which was performed by the people in 19th century to stop the bad luck. The dragon is created by thousand incense sticks. The incense sticks were being light up, so the dragon was literally 'on fire'. I think the dragon dance is a mandatory tradition during Mid-Autumn Festival. Many people gathered at Victoria Park to see the dragon. When I said many, it was really A LOT of people. I can't see anything from my position at the back row. All I see was handphones and tablets recording the event. I even got a clearer view from an old guy's tablet who stood in front of me... while he himself shoot the LCD screen! .___.
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| The only proper picture of (the head of) Tai Hang Fire Dragon I managed to take |
Many people in Hong Kong had picnic with their family or friends when I visited Victoria Park on 15 September. All of them brought foods, lanterns, candles and spent the night under the moonlight. It was a rare view for me, as I rarely see people in Indonesia do picnic (and in the night).
I think Mid-Autumn Festival is a really important festival in Hong Kong. The MTR which usually stop the operation at 1 AM even operates for 24 hours at that night to ease people to get home. The government even set the day after the Mid-Autumn Festival (16 September 2016) as a national holiday, so people could enjoy the whole night to admire the moon and spend time with the family without the fear to be sleepy at work or school in the next day. Wow :)
I guess that's all that I can tell you about the Mid-Autumn Festival in Hong Kong. I hope from this post and the pictures, you could also feel the atmosphere and excitement that I felt here. See you on my next post!
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| The full moon to end the post ;) |
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