It’s the time of the year when families gather to admire the bright, full moon, eat moon cakes, drink tea, carry lanterns and have fun with riddles. It’s the mid autumn festival, 中秋节.
This is the first year that 宝贝 is more aware of the various fun festivals and is not too “blur” to participate actively in. She has quite a few musical lanterns. Personally I find the music they emit pretty irritating and the least bit traditional. We bought her 3 paper lanterns from the supermarket, some candles and matchsticks.
In preparation for this happy occasion she set off to invite our neighbours’ boys on a lantern carrying escapade at the little park next to our house. The boys couldn’t really say no (although one of them is still in the midst of his psle), to an invitation from a girl.
Gathering at the meeting point…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1_bk8AVV5Q]
The boys weren’t quite prepared for the occasion. Luckily we bought 2 extra lanterns.
The 3 of them, happily in the park after the “procession” from our house.
The boys had a go, at lighting the lanterns with matchsticks. Everything’s so automated now that they find using matches a novelty!! =.=” As usual, kids were excited to play with fire.
The highlight of the night was when Bryan’s lantern caught fire. They were squealing and stamping out the lantern on fire.
Check out the burnt lantern.
I still remember the activities that we had when we were kids. Modern kids are so deprived nowadays with over protective parents (me included).
There was a game that we used to play at mid autumn’s festival. Required quite a number of people though. We divided ourselves into two groups. Each person would find a flat piece of rock to stick our candles on. Each group had a base which was a lighted candle. Defenders were sent to guard the base, to make sure that the candle remained lighted throughout the game. The rest were attackers and were tasked to extinguish the candle of the enemies. At the same time we must take care of our own candles to make sure they were not extinguished by the enemies. Once extinguished they could only be lighted up with the base candle. Whoever extinguished the enemy’s base candle wins!!
I assure you it’s really exciting. After all it’s real fire!! And you are surrounded by people who kept attempting to blow your candle out!!
The good old days when kids were allowed to play with fire and real lanterns, instead of playing with toys, masquerading as lanterns which emit irritating music. I miss those beautiful cellophane lanterns of the zodiac signs. The biggest problem is they are especially vulnerable to fire. But they were really beautiful ones. I still remember this awesome dragon lantern that I had, resplendent in its colorful cellophane, paint and glittery, sparkling decoration.
