Mid-Autumn in Victoria

Known by some of my exchange-student friends as Mooncake Festival because of the lotus-seed mooncakes that are traditionally eaten (and now highly commercialized) on this holiday, Mid-Autumn Festival is traditionally the end of the harvest season, being held on the autumnal equinox (this year October 3).

From talking to people more familiar with this celebrating this day, they said that they’ve gone on the roof or in the backyard and ate mooncakes while admiring the moon. In addition, lanterns are brightly lit and more often than not hung as sky lanterns.

We saw this latter part, and likely the first part when we went to explore the festivities in Hong Kong.

Now promoted as a touristy event to behold, there were at least three Mid-Autumn Festival congregations around Hong Kong. Two were held in New Territories, but the one we went to was in Victoria park on Hong Kong Island, near Causeway Bay.

Actually, Victoria Park used to be Causeway Bay when it was a bay crossed by a causeway and today serves as a notable example of the extensive (and ongoing) land reclamation on top of being a recreation area. One day, my Cantonese teacher once joked, you’ll be able to walk to Kowloon (which is currently across Victoria Harbour), but this is a topic for a different post.

The festivities took up the entire park. There were plenty of carnival-style booths and PRC 60th Anniversary posters, as well as performances (in Cantonese) that we could not possibly see because of all the crowds.

According to one friend, an older local in passing said in Cantonese, “Why are all these tourists here!?”

Outside of the family-fun area were the actual families. In the open grassy area across the fence from the paved tennis courts sat families making their own lanterns, not minding the plethora of tourists (including me) taking photos indiscriminately.

Though a great evening, that night we apparently missed the fire dragon. It meandered among people and according to my friends it had some close calls with people. I’d like to think the operators (via poles attached to the underside of the dragon) knew what they were doing.