Mid-Autumn Festival

The last Chinese festival we celebrated was the Bun Festival back in May. It feels like it has been for-ev-er since we've done something cultural in Hong Kong! Finally another holiday, Mid-Autumn Festival, and its corresponding celebrations, rolled around this week. Yay for more [free] cultural events!!

Cody brought home a moon cake (or yue bing, as Jade's class is teaching her) from work on Friday.

Isn't it beautiful? We've tried them before...
...and know we don't like them, but for the sake of the holiday, I cut it open and took another taste (Cody did not). Then I realized I don't think I've actually tried the egg yolk part. I mustered up the courage and did it. It was all I could do not to gag and maybe throw up a little. It is SO nasty. Not mild like an actual egg yolk--it is in fact really, realllly salty... and naaaasssty. I've decided I want to buy my own moon cake mold so I can make some that actually taste good.
Moving on, Mid-Autumn Festival was officially on Monday, but everyone was off work and out of school the day after. Jadyn's school allowed the kids to dress in Chinese outfits.
Hers was a bit small, but nothing a pair of leggings can't fix! I didn't want the white girl to be the only one not dressed up for the Chinese holiday! Plus she loved it as she decided she was a Chinese princess.
Monday night we went to the Tai Hang Fire Dragon with the Julians.
It was a bit nostalgic as we had seen the dragon three years ago when Jade was only four months old!

The cute Chinese girls with their Lotus Flower lanterns.
Jade gets the best seat in the house!
A random lady walking by stopped and gave Jade and Maleah a lantern to share.
I was worried about the "share" part, but they actually did pretty good.

The first female lead drummer I've seen on the Chinese drum! And she was good (see video below). Go, Girl!!
Bag pipes at a Chinese festival. Who knew?
Finally, after an hour plus of standing in the middle of a crowded neighborhood street with no air flow and hot, humid air, the dragon appears!!
Ooh la la! (reading too much Fancy Nancy?)
After it paraded through the street, the dragon stopped and they started passing out its incense sticks to the crowd.


A [shortened] video of the dragon:


We had to snap a few pics of our cute girl with her lantern and incense sticks for the Chinese holiday!


Because I love you all, I included a short video of the main event (above), but here is a longer video of more of the happenings during the evening, for those actually interested:


Tuesday night we headed over to Victoria Park for the lantern carnival.


They had a bunch of animal lanterns dispersed through the park.
At one location it had this sign where they named the animals. As I was glancing at it, I spotted Joe the Camel (bottom right corner--click on the picture to enlarge). Who thinks the "animal-namers" knew what they were doing and thought it was a good joke and who thinks they were clueless to the name's origin? I'm undecided, but it's probably the latter. I half expected him to have a cigarette in his mouth.
This was my favorite lantern--a large lantern display that looks like an actual traditional lantern.
The highlight of the park was this giant fish made out of lanterns, with the frame built solely out of bamboo poles.
Apparently it broke a world record for largest sculpture made out of lanterns.
On top of that, it had a light display shown every 15 minutes. Pretty cool.