Lanterns Galore ....

The Mid-Autumn Festival ( 中 秋) is certainly one of my favourite Chinese Festivals. As kids, we used to play in the garden with small lanterns while the adults will gather for food and drinks. Many other families also set up small altars with offering to worship the Moon. The highlight of the evening was certainly the display of a variety of lanterns made of paper (and sometimes cloth) hung all over the garden. In recent years, there were both small and large scale exhibitions of lanterns. One prime example is Leisure Mall which holds an annual competition for the best lanterns - made from recycled material, etc - usually around the Mid-Autumn Festival period.

However, ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival and presently on-going is this large scale exhibition of lanterns at the Bukit Jalil National Stadium - THE ASIA CULTURAL LANTERN CARNIVAL 2006.

Arriving early at 400 pm one afternoon, it was drizzling slightly then and we were thinking that the rain would be a damper on the fun of the evening. Luckily, the rain cleared by about 5 pm and the evening started off pretty cool. The open air exhibition place (Car Park A) was pretty empty as the lights would only be switched on at 730 pm and the stage show due to start only at 830 pm. The empty exhibition area meant that we could go round taking shots of the more interesting things that made up the lanterns; like this massive array of small bottles (originally intended for storing medicine for injection) filled with coloured water ....

and this collection of porcelain plates, cups, spoons all strung together .....

and this massive pile of CDs (a good use for all the confiscated pirated CDs, VCDs and DVDs!!!!)

What were they all part of?

The array of medicine bottles were turned into a beautiful presentation of the Petronas Twin Towers.

In the picture, the Blue Mosque was in the background and the Zoo in the foreground. The plates and other porcelain items were string together into an impressive Dragon some 100 metre or 328 feet long.

The CDs were stacked together to become the Langkawi Eagle.

We got to see the prancing lion ....

and this beautiful lantern made from umbrellas was a big huge with all!

Beside the lanterns, we got to see the sugar art master at work, hugely popular with the children!

while the dough art master were making beautiful figurines as well as this cute pig!

There were quite a number of food stalls serving local food but the more interesting food stalls were those from China and they served various Szechuan snacks and noodles. I liked the Szechuan Cold Noodles -

not too spicy or oily but very very tasty!!! They also served dumplings and paos but I could not eat much, though, as I had a very big late lunch in town - as normally, the food at outdoor exhibitions were generally quite pathetic :-)

The stage show which started at 830 pm was mainly acrobatics and while the young bare-chested male acrobats looked stunning and really yummy, the crowd was simply too large and packed to really comfortably enjoy the eye candies:-)

By 9 pm, the exhibition was packed full of people and from the hill, we could see that the roads leading in and out of the exhibition area were jam-paced with cars. It was certainly an exhibition well-worth the seven hours we were there!

Anyone planning to go should do go early!