Celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival in HK

Lights are a big part of HK's iconic night scene--from the thousands of neon billboards to the Symphony of Lights over Victoria Harbour. So it's no surprise the mid-Autumn festival celebrations included a number of lantern carnivals across the city. Traditionally, the mid-Autumn festival celebration includes moon glazing in a park and playing with hand carried lanterns (candle-lit). Today the city brings families together to celebrate the festival at local parks with elaborately designed, LED lit lanterns.

After braving the MTR crowds on Thursday night, we made it to Shatin's mid-Autumn festival lantern carnival at Sha Tin Park. A number of Family had blankets spread out on the grassy areas and shared mooncakes and played with glowsticks and homemade lanterns.

I was really impressed by the intricate details and the size of these lanterns.

My three favourite lanterns that were on display were:

#3: The traditional rotating lantern

The centre panel of this lovely lantern rotates to show different images (Photo:CathC)

#2: Bunnies admiring the vase

These bunnies staring the vase lantern were so cute (Photo:CathC)

#1: The 9-meter lotus showpiece

This handcrafted lotus lantern consist of 5 levels and each of the panels painted with Chinese scenes can also rotate (Photo: CathC)

Aside from these beautiful lanterns that lit up the park, there were also traditional round lanterns which dangled riddles underneath. These riddles are Chinese word riddles which are typically about facts and history around the mid-autumn festival.

If you guessed 5 of these riddles correctly, you win a prize (Photo: CathC)

It was a beautiful night in the park to enjoy the full moon and the impressive hand-crafted lanterns. Although I didn't play with any lanterns in the park, I bought a couple to decorate my flat with. Two AA batteries operate these LED.lanterns and they are decently bright. The starfruit is my favourite because the tissue-paper like material makes it very delicate and pretty to look at.

My goldfish and starfruit lanterns (Photo:CathC)

Happy mid-Autumn Festival!