Mid-Autumn Festival At Gardens By The Bay

An installation in the Dragonfly Lake.

I went to the Gardens by the Bay to have a look at the lanterns a couple of nights ago. It was still light when I arrived. So, I had a stroll in the gardens, took some pictures and went to have something to eat. By the time I finished dinner, the sky was already dark. The lanterns were lit and there was already a crowd.

The Gardens by the Bay is one of three places that put in a lot of effort for the Mid-Autumn Festival celebration. There are cultural performances, activities, carnival games and delicious treats from the food street stalls.

In the evenings, people go to the gardens to – as the website said, “capture beautiful memories with family and friends as they wander along picturesque paths lined with colourful lanterns inspired by Chinese mythology, legends and cultures depicting reunion, fate and affinity.”

Here are some photos of the lanterns and decorations. These were before the lights came on.

The Colonnade of Lights – a vibrant showcase of some 1,000 beautiful paper lanterns created by the community.

Carnival games and rides.

Food street – something to stave off the hunger pangs or quench your thirst.

The moon gate – a distinctive element in traditional Chinese landscape architecture.

I will post the photos of the evening in my next post – tomorrow.

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Mid-Autumn Festival, or Zhongqiu Jie (中秋节)

Today, the fifteen day of the eighth lunar month, is Mid-Autumn Festival, or Zhongqiu Jie (中秋节). It is also known as the Mooncake Festival and the Lantern Festival. It is said that on this day of the year, the moon is the fullest and brightest.

The three places that celebrate the Mid-Autumn festival in a big way in Singapore are the Chinese Garden, Chinatown, and the Gardens by the bay. There are also smaller celebrations in the estates all over the island.

I have never been to the Chinese Garden during the Mid-Autumn month. But apparently, the display of lanterns are quite impressive with various sizes, shapes and designs, some of which are very intricate.

In Chinatown, the streets are decorated with lanterns. Every year, there is a different theme, and planning for the festival begins early in the year.

This is the centerpiece for this year. This year's theme is rejoice in the family, or something to that extend.

A shop in Chinatown selling moon-cakes and lanterns.

A nicely package box of four moon-cakes.

A roll of four moon-cakes. This cost a quarter of the price of those above. They are mass produced in factories. So, the quality is not as good as those in the smaller shops.

There are many folklore and legends regarding the celebration of this Festival which started some 2,000 years ago. When young, the legends sounded interesting, but as one gets older, one will no doubt find them preposterous.

The version I believe in is that, once upon a time in China, farmers celebrated their bountiful harvest on this day when the moon was brightest. Families gathered to feast and make merry, and moon gaze while enjoying bean paste based pastries which they called moon-cakes.

In those days, there was no electricity, so the farmers made paper lanterns and hung them up for light. They also made small paper lanterns for the children to carry around their compound, to keep them amused.

Later on, during the late Yuan Dynasty, there was unrest. The rebels communicated the date to revolt by hiding the message in the moon-cakes. The revolt was successful, and the new emperor declared the moon-cake festival an official annual event.

When the Chinese immigrants headed down to South-East Asia, they brought the festival with them. Unfortunately, the meaning of this custom/tradition was lost in transition. Nowadays, most people do not know the story behind this festival.

The festival is now very commercialized. Businesses cash in on this occasion to churn out all sorts of flavoured moon-cake. The fancy moon-cakes, together with their even more fancy containers, are very costly. A nicely packaged box of four moon-cakes can cost between $50 to $80 SGD.

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It Is Difficult To Love

Love is never easy. Easy to say we love, but difficult to demonstrate it every day.

To love someone is to take a chance with love, with that someone you love. Some people called it a leap of faith. Only time will tell if the love works out. If it doesn’t, you could be in a very bad spot. You could be very miserable, deeply hurt and pained by someone you love and trust.

A lot of love and marriages failed because people think that the period of courtship is what love is like. They are deluded if that’s what they think. The real test of love comes after the honeymoon is over.

For love to grow and stay, for a relationship, or marriage to work, both partners have to put in effort. Both have to be committed, and trust in each other.

The following are some thoughts on love, some suggestions, and advice on how to make love stay.

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving. - Anatole France

No matter how you look at it, all the emotions connected with love are not really immortal; like all other passions in life, they are bound to fade at some point. The trick is to convert love into some lasting friendship that overcomes the fading passion. - Harold Pinter

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them with our own image – otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. - Unknown

Pure love and suspicion cannot dwell together; at the door where the latter enters, the former makes its exit. - Alexandre Dumas

Unconditional love may fail, but love with conditions does not even have a chance. - Unknown

Love is always a stranger in the house of avarice. - Andreas Capellanus

The best proof of love is trust. - Joyce Brothers

Love endures only when the lovers love many things together and not merely each other. - Walter Lippmann

Love and money should properly have nothing to do with each other. - John Saul

Love cannot be found where it doesn’t exist. There’s a difference between being patient with someone and wasting your time. - Unknown

Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another’s heart, or its flame burns low. - Henry Ward Beecher

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing. - Anais Nin

All quotes are taken from 👉Here - my personal collection which I started in my school days.

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Hollyhocks

I came across this beautiful, and interesting flower in the Flower Dome. Google lens told me it is called hollyhocks. I looked up the internet and found the following information on the flower from this website. 👉 Source

“Hollyhock is the common name of plants in the genus Alcea and family Malvaceae. They are a species of flowering garden plants with colorful cup-shaped flowers growing on tall spikes. Dozens of flowers can grow on a single stalk, and their colourful flowers of pink, white, red, yellow, or purple flowers look like hibiscus flowers.

“Hollyhocks reproduce through seeds. The reseeding takes place when seeds drop from spent flowers. They grow well where there is plenty of sunshine and fertile, moist, well-draining soil. After planting, hollyhocks require minimal care making them ideal garden plants." 👉 Source

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Roses

Roses are probably the most popular flower in the world. They symbolise love and passion, among other things. There are many varieties of roses, and they come in all colours with each colour symbolising a different emotion.

Roses have ‘thorns’, or more accurately, the term should be prickles. The prickles are found on most stems of roses as a defence mechanism to protect them from being eaten by animals. They are also an adaptation for some rose varities where they act as ‘hooks’ to secure the rose to surrounding taller vegetation or even supporting structures llike a trellis.

Roses are also eidble. They are commonly used to make jams, syrups and infused water. The popular local beverage, bandung, is made with rose syrup and evaporated milk, and has proven to be a flavourful and refresing thirst-quencher.

Here are some close-up shots of roses.

A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses. - Chinese Proverb

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Laughter, The Best Medicine

Laughter is our reflex to something that tickles our funny bone, something which we find amusing; it is when we find, or see the humour – in a joke, an action or a situation.

It doesn’t matter what kind of humour you indulge in, whether you revel in the coarsest puns or dwell on nihilistic black humour. As long as you engage in this type of activity you keep your mind working, sharp and nimble.

Laughter is a prevention against depression, a truly therapeutic agent of positive self healing.

The following images are from Facebook pages, and Whatsapp messages.

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