Mid-Autumn Festival Lanterns

Hong Kong always host displays of lanterns for mid-autumn festival. The displays get crowded, so it isn’t always a fun thing, but we decided to risk going early in an attempt to avoid at least some of the crowds so the kids could actually see the lanterns.

We decided to go to the easiest location for lantern viewing – Causeway Bay.

The kids adorned themselves in glowstick bracelets and necklaces and brought their lanterns with them. This year Bethany was sporting Hawaiian Stitch while Mitchell had an Airplane covered in Mickey and Friends. Both light up, both have annoying music. We spent a few extra bucks on lanterns this year though (purposely) because these lanterns have a 3rd option of lights with no music. This option meant Lisamaree and Titus maintained some semblance of sanity for the duration of the night.

While we were walking through the lanterns, a couple of photographers from one of the chinese newspapers here came up and asked to take photos of the kids. We were like ‘sure – why not’… at which point ‘Little miss photogenic must pose like a top model’ became insufferably shy and dug her face into Titus’s ribs. Mitchell meanwhile, thought it was a blast!

He ran, jumped and laughed in front of the lanterns, even taking direction from the photographers. Talk about a showman! We’re not sure if he ever made it into the newspaper as it could have gone in several different editions, but Mitchell had fun and that’s all that mattered.

It didn’t take Bethany long to re-find her form for my camera when she and Mitchell got up close and personal with a dragon lantern.

These are lanterns for the South East Asia Games being held in Hong Kong in December 2009. I’m still not quite sure what these games are about because a lot of the listed ‘sports’ don’t seem like sports to me… but the mascots are kinda cute.

Bethany was pretty excited to find a lantern with Australia on it. The giant rocket next to Earth she didn’t really notice though. I think these lanterns represented the chinese space exploration program.

It wouldn’t be a lantern carnival without flower lanterns. They seem to be quite symbolic of this time of year. These ones though commemorate specifically the 60th Anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China. They were very pretty and unfortunately my photos don’t quite do them the justice the deserve.

We were lucky, there were now crowds when we went through the lanterns, so the kids got to see everything they wanted. They had a great time and crashed when we got home. Always a good thing.