Mid-Autumn Festival; Not Quite

So yesterday when I decided to grab a quick bite to eat down the street at Crystal Mall, I noticed a lot of celebrating going on. Decorations were up in the plaza, eight roast pigs were neatly lined up on a table, dragon dance performances were being held, lettuce with red envelopes were hanging from the rafters and a photographer was on site to document all of it. Then I realized it must have been Mid-Autumn Festival, though it seemed quite early for it in the year. But we are in mid-August after all and Chinese holidays never fall exactly on the same dates every year in the Western calendar.

I kept thinking how I wished I had carried my dslr with me, but all I had was my camera phone so I followed the dragon dancers snapping photos and videos as they went from stall to stall performing their lettuce-eating dance. It wasn’t until I passed a table with two five-foot length sheet cakes with the words written on them celebrating the tenth anniversary of Crystal Mall that I realized the reason for the celebrations. So after confirming with a co-worker, Mid-Autumn Festival isn’t until mid-September actually. Oops! False alarm, hehe… but now I can be prepared for when it arrives so that I have my camera in hand.