Six words Saturday No 8

“Children are busy celebrating Mid-Autumn festival.”

The Moon festival (also called the Moon cake festival or Mid-Autumn Moon Festival ) falls on October 3 which is Saturday this year. Every year on this fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, the moon is at its maximum brightness for the entire year, traditional Chinese family will celebrate this special occasion so called "Zhong Qiu Jie." Children are told the story of the moon fairy living in a crystal palace, who comes out to dance on the moon's shadowed surface. This is a time for families to come together and eat moon cakes and pomelos, Mini yams, water caltrops, drink Chinese Tea, beneath the bright and full mid-autumn moon. In the old days, children used to play with colorful lanterns of animal designs such as rabbits, dragons and fish, but in keeping with the times, airplane, rocket, spaceship and superhero lanterns are popular now. Lantern processions are also part of the fun. Children in the neighborhood gather together and parade their colorful lanterns through the streets. While children are playing their lanterns, adults will sit together, drink tea, eat moon cake and chit chat until late night. Now in modern days of Singapore, every one is too busy to celebrate this traditional festival, young generation like to spend more time with friends rather than family members, a lot of traditional cultural are lost. Moon festival seems only left different kinds of modern type of moon cakes full filled in shopping center. And of course, at this very traditional festival, children in kindergarten are busy celebrating Mid-Autumn festival, this is a very good time for teachers to teach our culture and have fun to teach children to do handmade lanterns. Theses are some of the art work done by them, I happened to see one kindergarten organize the handmade lanterns competition in the park yesterday, some photos were taken there.

Anyway, I still want to say: “Happy Mid-Autumn festival” to every Chinese people who is in around the corner of the world which miss their home sweet home...