Mooncake Festival And Tanglong...

A Mid-Autumn Festival (Chung Chiu), is also the third major festival of the Chinese calendar, is celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month on Chinese calendar which falls on 14 of September this year (yesterday). After our dinner last night, we were so eager and in full anticipation that the neighbour children would come out with Tanglongs for Tanglong parade around the neighbourhood....

Darling nephew on his bicycle with Tanglongs.

According to history, Mooncake Festival started in 14th century. At the time, China was in revolt against the Mongols. Chu Yuen-chang, and his senior deputy, Liu Po-wen, discussed battle plan and develops a secret mooncake strategy to take a certain walled city held by the Mongol enemy.

So Liu dressed up as Taoist priest and entered the besieged city bearing mooncake. He distributed these to the city's populace. When the time for the year's chung chiu festival arrived, people opened their cakes and found hidden messages advising them to coordinate their uprising with the troops outside.

Thus, the emperor-to-be ingeniously took the city and his throne. Mooncake of course, became even more famous after that.

The mid-autumn festival is rich in oral history and legend related to mooncakes and it's festival, like a lady on the moon, her beauty is greatest on the day of the Moon festival.... the story notes that Chang-O, the wife of the Divine Archer, shot down nine of ten suns plaguing the world and received the Herb of Immortality as a reward...

After a while waiting, not one of the neighbour kids came out to join in the Tanglong parade with us. The four of us eventually walked a distance and it was drizzled a bit so we turned back. The sky was moody, the full moon was nowhere to be seen. The lady on the moon probably went to sleep early.

Tanglongs were lit up for children to carry and have a little fun of walking around the neighbourhood.

Ultraman Tanglong!

Tanglongs come in various sizes and shapes, from normal round ones to Ultraman, Pokemon, Hello Kitty shapes!?

Tanglongs on a bicycle.

And we had some mooncakes after the Tanglong parade :) That's for the Mooncake Festival.