Mid Autumn Festival 2007 in NTU

Last Friday evening, on the 21st of September, the Chinese society of NTU (Nanyang Technological University) held a Mid-Autumn Festival celebration right in the heart of the school-the beautiful Yunnan Garden, with a long heritage or more than 50 years.

Traditionally a Chinese festival, this event however, saw many non-Chinese students on exchange who participated with enthusiasm.

First off, a picture of the beautifully decorated stage!

Centrestage: The stage, set up behind the historical tablet commemorating the founding of NTU, was where the performances for the night were held.

Exchange students donned fancy traditional Chinese costumes for their pictures to be taken.

The Empress's new clothes: Exchange students posing in traditional Chinese costumes and getting dressed up as the two main characters from the story of the Mid-Autumn Festival-Chang E and Hou Yi.

Who could resist the delectables offered at the food stalls? The adventurous exchange students tried out the local delicacies at the food stalls ala pasar malam (night bazaar) style. Alot of them loved spicy food, and many knew places where I could get good food in Singapore, more than I did!



Bon Satay-petit: Our French students enjoying local Malay delicacy Satay from the bazaar.

"It's not just the weather that's hot!": French student Mathias Vautrin,21 (on the left) says he still can't get used to the spice but Swiss student Jonas is enjoying Nasi Briyani!

It's hard not to notice when you see a group of angmoh (meaning 'caucasian' in the dialect Hokkien) guys trying out pasar malam (night bazaar) food. I had to approach these guys to find out whether they were the sort of guys who would be on Fear Factor, or were terrified just thinking about eating durian or maybe pig intestines.I came up to one of the guys wandering from the gang, and asked him if he was an exchange student. He said yes, introduced himself as Royce, American, business student. I started talking to all four of them-Brent from Canada (the country better than US, he claims), Andrew from US ( no objections from him) and Martin from Sweden.

I wonder if you know, how they live in To-kyo!: Brent Huras, 20, an ADM student from Canada(extreme left), tries out "okonomiyaki"-a Japanese pancake with onion flakes and mayonnaise(he didn't know that when he put it into his mouth). The rest from left:Martin Nilsson, 23 from Sweden, Royce Rowan, 21 and Andrew Desalme,22 both from the US.

A brief recall of my conversation with the four dudes:

Me (to Brent): Wow, is that okonomiyaki you're eating?
Brent: Actually you know what? I don't really know what it is.
Me: It's a Japanese pancake.
Brent: Really! Awesome, I love Japanese food. Oh you know what? Canteen A has the best Japanese food ever. Rocks.
Me: OK...Oh did you guys catch the mooncake eating competition?
Royce: No, who won?
Me: The skinniest guy actually.
Royce: Wow, that's just like...the Japanese guy who's the hotdog eating champion.
Me: Yeah, did you know he dislocated his jaw and had to stop competing for good?
Royce: (looks stunned and bursts into hysterical laughter) HAHAHAHA!! I never heard a broken jaw would mean a career end for anyone!! Hahahha!!
He laughs exaggeratedly, holding onto his stomach, while the rest look at him, puzzled.
Me: Can you guys leave me your email addresses so that I can interview you for future assignments?
Brent: Does that mean you'd go out on dates with us?
Me: Haha, maybe.
Royce: WITH ALL FOUR OF US AT ONCE?? (looks at me suggestively in the eye)
Me: Erm, no. And anyway, I'm too busy to date.
Royce: Did you say you are EASY??
Me: I said BUSY!!
... ...
I can't think of any explanation for why our dear American friend said that except that he might have been poisoned by mooncake.

As for the mooncake competition, I was truly disappointed not to see any girls participating. Whoever said that girls have smaller appetites than guys has been living in a cave. I will never forget the one time when I watched a Japanese nationwide eating competition. They had to down 6 Bento sets for starters and then eat as many bowls of ramen as they could. The champion was a slim and rather attractive young lady who ate 15 bowls of ramen on top of the bento sets.
I would have volunteered myself for the mooncake eating competition but the mooncakes supplied were the baked ones and I do prefer snow skin mooncakes to baked ones, so I didn't take part in it.
The competitors were very sporting. However, what really puzzled me was that the emcee actually talked to the contestants during the competition-and expected them to reply! I mean, it's an eating competition right? What do you expect them to do, savour the mooncake whilst giving a speech at the same time?

Some pictures of the contestants in action:


See! The emcee is blabbering away with them, as if he was hosting a talk show!
Tea makes gulping mooncake down alot easier, it seems.

Next up, the Chinese yoyo or "che ling" in Chinese was performed by members of the Chinese society. They needed more practice, but still, it was great entertainment!

And a little girl from the crowd who can do a few tricks or two as well. Amazing...

I asked another French student, Tanguy (pronounced Tongue-ee) El Mouahidine if he had ever seen something like that before. He said the French have something almost identical to the Chinese yoyo, but is called DIABLO instead!
Diablo...sounds like the computer game.

"It's exactly the same as the Chinese yoyo, it has the same shape. However, it is played in a very different way. The style and patterns are not the same," he said.

When I told him there was a mooncake making station, he couldn't wait to try it out (and have a taste of his own mooncake! Hehehe...)

Here's a video of Tanguy getting wow-ed and ooh-ed at by the crowd.

"This mooncake tastes like what we call frangipane in France. It is a sweet cake with a light almond flavour, and its texture is similar to this mooncake," he told me. It seems like Tanguy is great at making observations with respect to cultural comparisons.

The lovely and helpful attendants of the mooncake making station!

Jonas and his very own mooncake looked upon by Viet(from Vietnam). Viet sure looks tempted to take a bite!

The garden was beautifully decorated with lights and lanterns, and each of the pavillions in the garden served as a game station or an activity station.

Wishing Gloriette: One of the activity stations where wishes were written on circular shaped pieces of paper and hung on strings suspended on poles along te path to the pavillion.

The wishes written on colourful pieces of paper.

A couple who made a wish to be happy and in love forever..How sweet! (The message is written on the circle and the two pieces of paper attached below read Love and Health)

The Crane Making station

The expert station attendants teach these students from China a trick or two about origami.

What are they looking at?

Let's take a closer look.

Ingenious! They made a board with enlarged, 3D versions of the folding instructions! I love this board!

Great station.

Just as I was about to leave this station, I suddenly overheard a conversation of a Chinese girl who told the station attendant that she was from Beijing. I was delighted because I had just been to China for half a year of exchange and internship. I sat down and talked to her, found out her name is Luo yun, a media student from Communications University in Beijing and bam!-we had so much to talk about! We blabbered endlessly-from how costly things are in Singapore as compared to China, the pollution in Beijing, to how Luo yun was impressed by how beautiful Singaporean girls are (now you know how lucky you are, Singaporean man.) The rest of the people could only sit and stare at us.

Luo yun, exchange student from Beijing's Communications University!

Other stations and games included tying of the Chinese knot, minesweeper, lantern riddles, balloon popping and even sale of accessories.

The Chinese Knot Tying station-with instructions on how to make your own knot. Shy station attendant playing hide-and-seek with me.

Minesweeper on the grass!

Can you say the colour without getting distracted by the words?

Balloon popping! This is one of the most popular games in China's fairs too!


Eveline, from Indonesia, is an environmental engineering student at NTU. She has only been here for two months but is enjoying herself so far. Here is our friend taking a shot at the balloons whilst her friends cheer her on.

A video of Eveline's friends trying their luck at the balloon station!

What I really liked about the festival was that there was this concept of "Cosplay" or costume play around, and there were people dressed up like characters from the story of the Mid-Autumn Festival. It was fun guessing who the characters were.


This guy is dressed up as the legendary Chinese God of Marriage, called Yue Lao. The Chinese believe that Yue Lao brings couples together by tying one end of a red string to a man and the other to a woman. However, this string is invisible to mortals!

The Chinese believe in three Gods-Fu, Lu and Shou. 'Fu' is the Chinese word for luck and happiness, and Lu stands for wealth and Shou represents longevity, This is Fu posing with a victory sign! Hehe.

Masters students in Science,Ashwin Venngopal and Srini, both from India, posing with Fu!

Looks like one of exchange students found the Jade Emperor in Yunnan Garden.

I don't really know what the guy is dressed up as, but the Lady in pink is the beautiful Chang E, who was trapped on the moon together with...

The Jade Rabbit!!

If you can't dress up like them, you can still look like them...

All it takes is a picture!

The final part of the performance was the 'Passing of lights'. This is a traditional ceremony of NTU in celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival. The significance of the ceremony is to spread love and goodwill for generations to come. The light also represents the spirit of the school and the traditional Chinese values that will be passed on. The theme song for this ceremony was sung aloud by many students in the audience. It is said that this song was written by former NTU students.

As the event came to an end, I thought about all the things I had spoken to the exchange students about that night.

I realized that none of them knew what the Mid-Autumn Festival was about (other than the fact that it happens during mid-autumn), why we carried laterns on this special night and why we eat mooncakes.

Well all except one, who told me that he read the story on Wikipedia, but was not sure whether it was accurate. He asked me to tell him the story.

Most of the exchange and foreign students loved the celebration, and thought the decorations were very "pretty", but politely apologized when I asked if they knew why people celebrated the 15th of August on the Lunar Calendar, when the moon is the roundest.

I heard that the International Student's Centre had another celebration of their own, and they recounted the story to the students. Alot of the foerign students I talked to in Yunnan Garden that night told me it was their first time in Asia and that they came here because they wanted to learn more about Asian culture.

I don't think it was their fault that they didn't know, but perhaps the essence of the culture, beneath all the stunning and glorious oriental designs, has been hidden instead of communicated to them. I was happy to answer questions from foreign students about sights and smells that were unfamiliar to them, instead of seeing them just snapping pictures of everything they saw and not bothering to find out what they were.

I had a great evening.