Colorful lanterns for sale on Peel Street in Hong Kong.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Lunar calendar. This year, it falls on October 3, 2009. Also called the Moon Festival, it is the second most important Chinese festival, after Chinese New Year.

The festival is celebrated by gathering with the whole family to enjoy the full moon, while moon cakes are served. Children run around playing with their lanterns.

The traditional lantern is hand made of bamboo and translucent paper. It is lit with a candle inside,and carried suspended from a stick. Nowadays, most lanterns you find on sale are mass produced, made of plastic, and lit by battery. Nevertheless, it’s still fun to light one on Mid-Autumn festival.

A lantern in the shape of a lotus.

For more information, see the official Sri Lanka Tourism site.

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This year, Moon Festival falls on September 14, 2008.

Crowds line up here at Lin Heung Bakery, one of the oldest bakeries in Hong Kong, for their moon cakes.

Japanese and French archaeologists have helped Vietnam prepare the bid for the Thang Long Imperial Citadel site for recognition by UNESCO, said the Vietnam News Agency.

Communist Vietnam hopes to have the citadel listed before Hanoi celebrates its 1,000th birthday in 2010, and workers are now excavating palace structures and artifacts at the site, which is closed to the general public.

Hanoi became the capital of Vietnam in 1010 under the Ly dynasty, and was then known as Thang Long, or Ascending Dragon, symbolising the desire for independence after a millennium of Chinese domination.

The remains of the ancient citadel and relics from five feudal dynasties were first discovered in 2002 during excavation work to build a new national assembly in the centre of the capital, putting construction on hold.

Archaeologists found thousands of artifacts, including terracotta figures of dragons and phoenix heads, ceramics, cannon, swords and coins.

The dig unearthed ancient palace foundations and the remains of the central forbidden city, with ruins dating back 1,300 years to the Chinese Tang dynasty.

The find started a dispute between heritage and development forces over what to do with the ruins located in what has been Vietnam’s centre of political power for much of its history, from ancient times until today.

The 20,000-square-metre (200,000 square-foot) dig shared a city block with the former Ba Dinh national assembly and is located near the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam’s revolutionary leader and first president.

The assembly was demolished this year and a new one will be built on the same site, allowing the adjacent ruins to be saved, officials have said.

The ancient ruins were designated a national architectural and historical relic site in February, when Deputy Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Tran Chien Thang pledged to preserve the vestiges of the citadel.

Image of an abacus, from the upcoming book H is for Hong Kong, illustrated by Elizabeth Briel.

Front cover

By Janet Brown, Photography by Nana Chen. Coming late 2008, from ThingsAsian Press.

Photo by Nana Chen

Samples of Chapter opening photos

Photo by Nana Chen

Photo by Nana Chen

Photo by Nana Chen

Photo by Nana Chen

Front and back cover

For those not living in China, I have not found out how one can buy tickets, yet, but keep monitoring the official Beijing 2008 Olympic Games web site at en.beijing2008.cn and that of the National Olympic Committees

???? (pinyin: gong1 xi3 fa1 cai2; Cantonese: gung1 hei2 faat3 coi4). Probably the most popular (there are many) Chinese New Year greeting. It means great wealth for the New Year, or simply wish you make lots of money in the New Year.

Some of the world’s richest foodies descended on Bangkok February, 2007, for an exclusive dinner of caviar, truffles and vintage wine at 29,000 dollars-a-head.

Six Michelin three-star chefs, all flying from Europe for the one million baht (29,000 dollars) feast, were putting the final touches to the 11-course meal, which organisers said was the most expensive ever in Asia-Pacific or the developing world.

The dinner was served to 40 guests, including 15 paying customers and 25 lucky people invited for the feast, Lebua hotels and resorts said.

Much of the proceeds from the meal — which cost more than twice what the average Thai office worker earns in a year — will go to the aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and Thai development charity the Chaipattana Foundation, founded by the nation’s king.

A Singapore marriage agency is offering a Lunar New Year special on brides from China’s Fujian province, the agency told AFP on Monday.

The discounts through Mr Cupid International Matchmakers Pte Ltd are only “for this 15 days of celebration for the New Year,” ending on March 4, said the firm’s Singapore managing director, Martin Wong. Under the Lunar New Year deal, a prospective groom pays a 2,000 Singapore dollars (1,299 US) deposit that gets him a trip to China where he meets with potential brides, Wong said.

If the man finds his match, he must sign an agreement that he intends to marry the woman, and then gets a rebate of 1,999 dollars.
“In other words, what he actually paid is just one dollar” for the matchmaking trip, Wong said. The balance of 6,000 dollars in fees can be paid over 10 to 15 months in interest-free installments, compared to a normal price of up to 9,000 dollars in total, Wong said.

As an added bonus, Wong said Mr Cupid is offering a further 1,000 dollar rebate to couples that have a child in the first year of marriage, or 500 dollars within two years — in line with the Singapore government’s encouragement of couples to procreate. Two customers, including one Monday morning, have already signed up for the New Year special, Wong said.

“I’ve been putting off marriage for many years, and my mother has been nagging at me to settle down,” one of the prospective grooms, identified as Mr Tan, was quoted as saying in Monday’s The New Paper. Tan, a civil servant in his late 40s, said that with Mr Cupid’s interest-free installment offer, “I might as well take advantage of it.”

Mr Cupid was founded in Vietnam 15 years ago, has an office in Fujian and opened in Singapore five years ago, Wong said. He said the agency already has a strong demand for Vietnamese and Cambodian brides, and the Lunar New Year promotion aims to boost demand for Fujian women. Mr Cupid, one of numerous marriage agencies in the city-state, says it has arranged close to 4,000 marriages since the firm’s founding.