Preparing for the Mid-Autumn Festival

Mid-Autumn Festival, or Zhongqiu Jie to give it its Chinese name, is coming up next Monday night, and there are big preparations happening all around.   Mid Autumn Festival is celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month in the Chinese calendar.  To read the background stories behind the Mid-Autumn Festival have a look at the wikipedia page, which gives a decent summary of the legend of Chang'e and Houyi.

The Mid Autumn Festival is celebrated by eating moon cakes (a heavy round cake often filled with lotus paste and egg yolks and stamped with Chinese characters), burning incense to deities, dragon dances and hanging lanterns.  A lot of cities and towns will put up large lantern displays.  Here's a few photos of the display going up in the park in Tin Shui Wai, where we live.

Come next Monday night, these will all be lit up.  It should be really pretty I think.  There's also a stage going up in the park, so I assume that there will be some cultural performances.  Personally, I'm hoping for acrobats!