Mid Autumn Festival 2024.
A Sea of Lights.
14.09.2024 - 15.09.2024
The Mid Autumn Festival is my favourite of all the Chinese festivals, because it is just so beautiful. This year a lot of the displays are being combined with Chinese National Day Celebrations. Mid Autumn Festival changes its date but this year it is on the 17th of September. Chinese National Day is always on the first of October, but this year is the 75th anniversary of the founding of The People's Republic of China, so it's a bigger than usual celebration.
I have told the legend of The Mid Autumn Festival many times on my blog. This year I am being lazy and just copying it from last year.
Long ago there were ten suns in the sky, making everyone too hot, shriveling up the people's crops and drying out their wells. A brave archer named Hou Yi, who could no longer endure the people's suffering, shot nine of the suns out of the sky with his arrows. He was rewarded for doing this by being given some elixir of everlasting life, but there was only enough for one person. Hou Yi wouldn't drink it, as he could not stand the idea of his beautiful wife, Chang'e dying and him being left all alone. However, his evil apprentice, Feng Meng, learnt of the elixir and broke into Hou Yi's home when he knew he was out. He threatened Chang'e and tried to make her hand over the potion. The only thing Chang'e could do to stop Feng Meng from drinking the mixture was to drink it herself. After gulping it down, she immediately felt herself grow lighter and lighter and she began to float upwards out of the window, into the sky and all the way up to the moon. She lives there to this day with her pet white rabbit. When Hou Yi discovered his wife had gone, he was devastated and he took to spending long periods of his time gazing up at the moon, hoping he might catch a glimpse of her.
If nothing else, this explains why there are so many white rabbits in the displays.
Some of the Mid Autumn Festival displays are only up for a very short time, so I had to make a real effort to go and see them. I started on Saturday evening. I had spent the whole day scrubbing down my house, but then after dinner, forced myself to go out even though I was really tired. I made it as far as Tsing Yi Park. The display here was very pretty, not too huge and not too crowded, so I ended up enjoying it.
The first Mid Autumn Festival display I saw was actually in The Maritime Square Mall where I got off the train. The others were in the park. The displays included: butterflies, flowers, rabbits, fish, pandas and birds.
Some entertainment takes place at this festival. During my visit there was a singer.
I really wanted to see the lantern display in Victoria Park. I went last year on the day that it opened and it was great, but this time I had to visit on a Sunday, the busiest day of the week. I arrived around fifteen minutes early and had to join a queue. I was really starting to think I should either have come at a later time or an earlier day. Eventually the gates opened and we could go in. I walked past the first displays as they were already busy and found myself at a fashion parade of traditional Chinese clothes. I watched this for a bit.
Then I went off to investigate other displays. There are stalls here and a video about The Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance. I'd like to see the real thing some time, but dread the crowds.
At every display there was a long queue of people who wanted to take selfies. I didn't want a selfie. I just wanted a picture of the lanterns. The only way to get this was to be rude and push in, so that's what I did and I may have pissed lots of people off, but that's just too bad. There were displays with pandas, fish, birds, rabbits, traditional Chinese buildings.
There were white rabbits hopping around everywhere.
There were several displays with pandas, such as: pandas with traditional Chinese buildings, pandas with bamboo, pandas enjoying a hotpot.
There was a revolving moon with some kind of creatures on top of it.
There were different kinds of birds and butterflies.
There were displays marking seventy-five years of the PRC.
There were traditional Chinese buildings
There were flowers, a lantern tower and an assortment of other lanterns.
Finally there was a statue I had never seen before, probably of some kind of superhero.
I could have gone home from here, but I decided I might as well check out Tsim Sha Tsui on my way back. That way I would have been to the three main display areas.
In front of the clock tower in Tsim Sha Tsui there was a long dragon lantern.
And to my surprise I arrived just as the sound and light show started. There's a bit of a running joke about the sound and light show as in all the years we have lived in Hong Kong we have never seen it. I've recommended it to others without even being sure it existed. I phoned Peter to say I had just seen it and he didn't believe me.
As I was heading to the MTR a display started on the dome of the space museum. It was celebrating the Chinese successfully landing on the far side of the moon.
Wow what an evening of stunning displays and to top it all off the elusive sound and light show. Just as well you didn’t go home earlier 😁
by Catherine