The Mid-Autumn Festival in Vietnam

Tonight we went to the Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations at the Australian International School - an annual event eagerly anticipated by all the students, regardless of their nationality.

Kitted out in their Chinese-style Vietnamese dresses, this was Georgia and Mackenzie's first Mid-Autumn Festival party and they loved it!

Over the last few weeks the students at AIS have been learning about the festival traditions and making colourful lanterns, hung throughout the school's grounds for tonight's festivities. The girls were proud to show off their work which will be donated to local orphanages after the festival.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, is held on the 15th day of the eighth month on the Chinese calendar (tomorrow, Wednesday 22 September). It's a date that parallels the autumnal equinox of the solar calendar...in layman's terms, that's when the moon is supposedly at its "fullest" and "roundest".

This is an important family event in Vietnamese culture where family and friends will gather to admire the full moon, eat moon cakes and pomelos.

One of the many cultural traditions associated with the festival are lion dances, just one of the performances we enjoyed this evening. We also watched traditional drummers, acrobatic lion dances and a disturbing man who amused the audience by hanging various heavy items off his eyelids (I kid you not!).

Here are a few photos of tonight's festival:

Traditional drummers

Lion dances



Creepy man with very strong eyelids!

The kids were suitably gobsmacked!

Tommorow is the official Mid Autumn Festival and we've been invited to a celebration organised by our compound's management. I'll fill you in on more of the traditions and stories associated with the Mid Autumn Festival in tomorrow's post.