Lanterns, fire dragon, pandas: Mid-Autumn Festival in Hong Kong has something for everyone

HONG KONG, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- When crowds swarm Hong Kong's streets carrying lanterns and raising their phones to capture the full moon, Mid-Autumn Festival has arrived.

The city offers an exclusive experience for this popular traditional festival. This year's Mid-Autumn Lantern Carnival in Victoria Park added a novel twist -- a World Lantern Boulevard adorned with over 3,000 lanterns from 20 countries and regions worldwide.

They glow alongside over 400 handmade local-style lanterns in the shapes of white rabbits and goldfishes, as well as a main installation of Chinese Bayan trees standing as tall as eight meters.

The trees are made by a team of 33 craftsmen from east China's Nanjing City. Yu Zhongzhi, manager of the company responsible for the installation, said the team wanted to recreate memories of neighbors sitting and chatting under Chinese Bayan trees, which are native to Hong Kong, in a festival for family reunions.

Later into the night of the festival, the park welcomed one more tradition -- the century-old fire dragon dance. Over 300 performers hoisted up a 67-meter fire dragon straw skeleton bristling with more than 12,000 burning incense sticks all over.

The dance started from the Tai Hang neighborhood in Causeway Bay, the home of the National Intangible Cultural Heritage in China, and advanced westward into the park to meet the lantern carnival. The fire dragon undulated and rolled into a coil as the performers swung the poles from side to side in shifting formations.

Many of the performers were former Tai Hang residents who make time every year to return and honor the neighborhood tradition, said Cheung Kwok-ho, director of the dance. The performance usually takes as long as six months to prepare.

Friday marks the first day of the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday in the Chinese mainland. Many tourists chose to visit the Hong Kong Ocean Park, where the giant panda family had their festival feast on Wednesday. Jia Jia and De De, the first giant pandas born in Hong Kong, ate custom mooncakes made from biscuits and carrots with their parents.

While people look up into the night sky, one Hong Kong resident is gazing back. Lai Ka-ying, Hong Kong's first astronaut now working in China's Tiangong space station as a payload specialist, sent holiday greetings from some 400 km above the Earth's surface.

"In this moonlight we share, our hearts reach for one another," she said.