Lanterns

One of the things I remember about my early childhood days living in a huge ancestral house was Mid Autumn's Festival. Every Mid-Autumn's, the gardener (yes, the house and the garden was big enough to have a live in gardener) would string lanterns with candles inside all around the garden and on our Casuarina trees as well, making them look like giant Christmas trees. The lead up to it would be unearthing huge bags of lanterns from the storeroom, checking to see which were usable and sticking candles into them. That took days but was always fun to do and occupied us for hours on end. On the night itself, the extended family would gather around and eat mooncakes, drink tea and eat pomelo. It was great fun. We used to see how many lanterns we could set fire too. Too bad I was too young to think about photographs at that time because what I would give to have photographs of that now.

I also recall knowing when Mid Autumn's was upon us because of the stores that would have rows and rows of colourful cellophane lanterns hanging outside that would entice almost any child. I would gaze in wonderment at the lanterns and try and figure out how to convince my Nanny or my mom to get me one. Seeing shops like that now, still bring back the same memories. Nice ones.

There's a shop like that near where we live now. It's a Chinese Ma and Pop store and they sell party gifts and all sorts of decoration. You always know what festival is upon us because the outside of the shop would be dressed correspondingly. Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, Mid Autumn's, Halloween, Christmas...

We brought the twins there yesterday to get a lantern each. They needed one for school and I wanted to get them one as well since it's nostalgic time for me.

They reacted in the exact same way I remember reacting. They wandered through the rows, touching the colourful transparent lanterns, squealing as they identified the various animals (we told them they weren't to get Barney and Barney was an animal) and generally having loads of fun. Of course, they made us sweat as we had visions of having to pay for rows and rows of damaged lanterns.

In the end, we decided to get them each a goldfish. No point getting anything different because that's just an invitation to fight and they have enough opportunity for that as is.

They banged it most of the way home and led Packrat to quip that had there really been a candle in there, the lantern would have caught fire very early on.




















The lanterns are now hanging, out of reach in my wardrobe, in the hope of making them last till Mid Autumn's itself.


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