Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! 中秋節快樂!
2018 is the second year I’ve been spending the Mid-Autumn Festival in Singapore! This year, I marked down three events to check out, unlike last year, when I just moved back to Singapore in June, and wasn’t aware (plus did not bother to look up) any events or activities related to the festival, and just kind of sat around wistfully missing all the festivities and energy that takes over Hong Kong during this festival season.
There I was mumbling about Singapore not really celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival, but hey! Turns out I just didn’t know any better last year! It turns out that Singapore just celebrates the Mid-Autumn festival in a slightly different way, and in my personal opinion, I’d describe the difference as … Mid-Autumn here feels relatively calmer and slightly less traditional? (On a related note, click here to read more about what the Mid-Autumn Festival is about.)
Hand painted lanterns displayed at Gardens by the Bay
Of the three Mid-Autumn Festival events I attended, they featured Disney/English pop music/English songs with lyrics related to the moon. It felt quite “Westernized” for a traditional Chinese festival haha! But I enjoyed them anyway! :) Certain elements such as the fire dragon dances that happens in Hong Kong also do not happen here, as far as I’m aware of. Mooncake is also serious business here though hahaha (although with less giant billboard ads plastered everywhere) and I sampled some yummy ones this year but I miss my favourite snow skin ones from Hong Kong!
With that said, here is a little look into Mid-Autumn Festival events in Singapore. Do you celebrate the festival? How do you celebrate it where you are? :) (See my post here for Mid-Autumn Festival events in Hong Kong from 2016.)
Disney Tsum Tsum Mid-Autumn Celebration of Love
I visited this completely adorable display of Tsum Tsum lanterns and sculptures, with a cutesy and romantic theme on a Saturday and the crowds were crazy! There were 1-2 hour queues for certain displays and photo taking ops and so I gave up on some of the popular displays (like a tunnel of Tsum Tsum lanterns) and only managed a few snapshots! But I enjoyed what I saw and found the whole thing really cute!
Mid-Autumn @ Gardens by the Bay 2018
I was pretty excited for this event and it’s a free event that happens every year at Gardens by the Bay, so it could be something to add to your calendar for next year if you didn’t make it this year! I enjoyed walking around GBTB and seeing the giant sized lanterns they displayed. My favourite ones were the row of multi-coloured GIANT lanterns. It might not be very clear in my photos, but they were at least the height of two people!
This is a Mid-Autumn edition of the Garden Rhapsody music and light show, and they played almost all English songs with lyrics related to the moon. I liked it but was also quite amused by it! In this video, I captured a section of it when they played the Teresa Teng classic “The Moon Represents My Heart”.
Wan Qing Mid-Autumn Festival 2018
For the last event, I dropped by the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall just yesterday to visit both the museum and their annual Wan Qing Mid-Autumn Festival event! There were some simple lantern decorations around the place and a variety of activities (like mooncake and tea tasting!) for visitors or people in the community.
I liked this pretty little display, but I’m still giggling about those mooncakes that are sitting on a miniature chair!
There was also this giant mooncake (1.8 metres in size) unveiling and I just found it very funny to see such a huge pie of a mooncake. If you’re wondering, yes it’s edible and they were going to cut it up and distribute it, but I didn’t stay long enough for that! I bet it made for great photos for Instagram though hahaha! ;)
