TOURISM Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ng Yen Yen should know that it is wrong to call the recent event at Central Market/Petaling Street a lantern festival.

There is no lantern festival in Chinese culture though Chinese hang lanterns in their houses as decorations and for good luck, and children play with them on various occasions. That’s why over time people have mistaken it for some sort of tradition.

People hold lantern parties, shows, displays, carnivals, celebrations, or parades to celebrate a good harvest, good fortune, or a joyous occasion.

Thousands of years ago, people in China went to temples to pray, make offerings and give thanks to the divine and the deities during the Mid-Autumn Festival. They would offer flowers and fruits at the altar. There were neither lanterns nor mooncakes.

Playing with lanterns was introduced or rather added much later as something for children to play with, to keep them busy, awake and around, while elders waited for the full moon to come up.

As for mooncakes, the Chinese in ancient China chose the 14th day of the eighth lunar month to send a secret message in a poison cake, one each to every home, to give it to the Tartar soldiers, who were standing guard in front of their houses. The soldiers were to be fed at the stroke of midnight on Mid-Autumn Day.

When the folks woke up the following morning on the 15th day, all the Tartar soldiers were missing. That was how China won the Tartar war. And, this is how the Chinese started to use mooncakes to celebrate the Mid -Autumn Festival and subsequently in remembrance of the victory.

It is wrong to say lantern festival or a mooncake festival. It is the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Lau Bing
Singapore

Source: The Sun – September 30, 2009