My favourite holiday would be Christmas if we actually had larger-scale celebrations for it here. Since I'm a Chinese, though, I might as well talk about a Chinese celebration. I think that'd mean a lot more, considering the fact that we actually do celebrate these properly and actually still follow certain traditions. Of course, as most things are, these have been pretty modernised in such an anglicised country but the essence of these celebrations—family bonding and like happiness-related things—still remain.
Once again, imma try and tell you things you can't find off the Internet, which means they'll be very specific to my family and a terrible reflection of what it means to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is something we celebrate every August (? uh) and has probably got something to do with rejoicing about harvest I DON'T EVEN KNOW OMG. #InaccurateReflectionOfMidAutumn #AccurateRepresentationOfMe At this time of the year, on one specific day of the month on the Chinese calendar, the moon appears to be as full and round as it can be. Therefore, on this day, families gather to admire the moon, among other things xD
I live with my parents and maternal grandmother, but my parents and I are invited to my uncle's house every year to celebrate Mid-Autumn. My uncle (大伯) and his family are usually the hosts of such things as he's the oldest out of four brothers on my dad's side. I'm an only child but all my uncles have more than one kid so I've got a number of cousins that's big enough to cause a scene but small enough that I'm close to all of them—seven, to be exact. I'm also the oldest by a year and the youngest is seven this year! Cute bean.
The first thing we're always required to do when we walk through the door is bow down and kiss the floor. Nah I'm joking—Chinese aren't all weird mmk. But yes, I walk through the door and it's a must must must to greet all the adults by their Chinese title things. And when you come in all the kids just greet your parents and it feels a little weird but eh.
Anyway, we gather, the eight of us, and then I notice that the fourteen-year-old dude has grown again and it's like wut happened 2 ur voice and he's got funky hair now wowow and then there's the eleven-year-olds who are literally a year away from PSLE but I still see them as fivelets, and then there's the seven-year-old who is just seven and so cute and bullied. Poor bean.
After a while of TV and socialising, the ladies gossiping about our grades (eugh), the men talk about...I don't actually know what, and us small ones catching up a little bit and playing Minecraft, it's time for dinner. Dinner is home cooked by my aunt and mind you she is a good cook. It's usually the same few dishes every time, though no one minds. And also, rice. Always rice. And soup. There's only space at the table for so many people, so the parents occupy that space, preparing bowls for their children and passing it to them filled along with a spoon. Then we're all sent off to sit in front of the TV, around the low table on little plastic stools. Maids will feed the younger ones and the rest of us hold the bowls in our hands, just sitting there. These days though, because I'm the oldest, my mum often makes me sit at the dining table to engage in that dumb adult talk, claiming that there's "no space" where the others are. Hello? I've been sitting there since I was born?
The two fourteens are getting dragged into this as well though, so *troll face*
After dinner, of which I'm always the last to finish, we all evacuate into the room where there's aircon and peace. Mobile phones and iPads make an appearance. Drama ensues as someone realises he doesn't have a smart device—extra drama if it happens to be that extra whiney kid—and Minecraft happens. In survival, we usually work together although brothers might kill each other for the sake of it. In creative we just build stuff and at one point, said whiney kid was being a troll and ruining our houses with lava.
After a while, we go downstairs. Most Singaporeans live in apartments and we usually go down to the void deck or playground. It's a tradition for children to carry paper lanterns on Mid-Autumn. They're collapsible and we light candles before fixing them in and pulling them open, then let them dangle from sticks as we carry them around. They come in an assortment of colours—pink, red, green, yellow, orange. There are also electrical ones which are basically made of rubber/plastic and are squishily filled with air and fixed with LED bulbs and play annoying kiddy music. We just walk around the block with the glowing lanterns for fun, ye.
Mid-Autumn really is the festival of fire for us kids. Besides the lanterns, we play with candles and sparklers. Before we decided that was plain evil, we used to burn up boxes of candles just lighting them all and lining them up in snaking rows. At some point we'd end up building a small campfire, lying candles on the floor and dumping leaves and twigs into the mix. Somewhere along the way, the cardboard candle box will get ripped apart and thrown in as well. This, my friends, is how we sacrifice an entire box of candles, including the box.
Then there's sparklers, which is basically just us firing those sticks till they like up and dazzle, sometimes making a "double star" by burning it from the middle instead of the tip. Fireworks are illegal in Singapore, so this is about the closest you can get xD So are hedgehogs, by the way.
Also, mooncakes. So basically like Moon but put into a cake. Mooncakes are a pastry (?) traditionally filled with lotus paste and salted (?) egg yolk in the centre, which represents the moon. But as we all know it, tradition is too mainstream and the original brown skins now compete with colourful snow skins and even crispy crusts. The lotus filling has also been replaced by things like yam paste and red bean paste and the yolk in the centre can even be white chocolate.
So I'm not very sure how to end this xD I wrote too much again. Bye!
