Today is Chinese 15-th in the Eight month in lunar calendar, the lantern festival.
In Chinese it's called 中秋, where the moon is on its fullest on this day. I still remember that during small time, normally we celebrated the festival with cousins. As we were from small city, our activities were more to nature. Besides playing Tang-lung, eating moon cake and drinking tea, our fun time was normally with candles outside the house. That was our only "licensed" cooking time: Ma-masak! I still remember one of us had to do plucking (choose some grass to as vegetables), one of us had to light up fire, one of us collect cooking tools such as: Biscuit container steel cover or milo container cover as the cooking pot and stone as pot supporter. I remember we put some candle as oil, use a lidi to stir it, put in our "vegetables". The cooking process was a bit hard as the leaf was very small and it got burnt very easy. And one of us had to block the wind from putting off the fire. We used our imagination- there was a type of small flower bud in green color, which we called as cabbage. I am wondering where i can find that type of wild plant again!
I hope i still remember the smell of the burning candle, as that is the smell of our memory.
During those days, this type of big paper lantern with shape more than 4 corners were consider rare to us. All those pentagon hexagon shape, with the curly hair at each side, were a bit expensive for us to buy it. But sometimes they did exist in triangular shape or rectangular shape too. The characteristic of the expensive lantern was, i guess, the curly hair. So in my memory, lantern festival means tang-lung with small round shape or oval shape. Red color lantern was eye-catching but it couldn't light up our journey in the small dark street. I remembered light yellow was the best one.
~
pic taken from http://alleyesonally.blogspot.com/2008/09/
I remembered that was one time during lantern festival, there was an ice-sculpture exhibition in our hometown. A few of us, the small cousins, were so excited to experience winter in the town. But i couldn't remember whether we visited the place or not. My memory just stop at the scene: My father was about to bring a few of us out of my aunty house.
There were a few times when we walked hand-by-hand together to a school to watch tang-lung competition. Those tanglungs were created by students. And there were lots more activities at the school stadium, such as singing etc. One of the year, my elder cousin got number 1 in his tanglung making competition, with his friends. The tanglung i still remembered, was red and a little of black color in combination. The tanglung was hung high, and it can turn automatically. There were some hanging cloth at each corner, with some writing on it. Correct me if i am wrong Kelvin, i guess you have better memory than me!
As i grow older, my parent can afford more and that was when i remembered my sister got the improved version type of tang lung, wired cartoon shape with the candle paper. This type of tang lung can hold the candle more and it was not that easy got burnt as compared to the paper type. The position for candle was designed to be away for the tang lung wall. There were either in animals shape: chicken, rabbit, tiger, doggy, etc, or in cartoon shape.
Not only human changes, but so the mooncake. "Oversea" was the best brand we would see. Pure lotus paste with single egg yolk was the most expensive flavour. Maybe we could only have it a small mouth each person. The steel case container would be the best collection of the year because that was the collection container for other stuff such as jewelry, news-paper cutting, cartoon sticker, etc.
I see mooncake flavour improves from pure white lotus to green color pandan flavour called "Fei-Chui". Later, there was an extra orbit added to the moon, called "Fei-Chui Yok Wan". I also see the moon got double when single yolk lotus improves to double yolk lotus.
I see the mooncake price hikes up every year. From my memory of RM6, to RM7, RM8, RM9, RM10, and today RM15 in average per piece.
Pure lotus get upgrade a few years ago to flavour like Crystal skin, Green tea, durian, coffee, charcoal. And today what do we have? Grand ruby from Bakers cottage: Red yeast butter pastry skin; Golden Bliss from Bakers cottage: carrot butter pastry skin with pumpkin paste, macademia nut, crabberries and sesame seeds; Cheesy Choc-Oreo; Oriental Passion from Casahana: Cranberry and melted white chocolate once "ting" from the oven.
Nowadays, children play the modern and improved version of tanglung- the battery era. For their safety purpose, the tanglung can be lighten up with just a push of a button. I remembered my the-only-sister had the Hello-kitty-monkey version from one of our cousins. One time, she was so angry and cried because a little boy of my mother's friend came to our house and nearly spoil it. Although the "electronic-candle" of her tanglung did not work anymore, but I think she still have it in our storeroom until today.
With the improvement in our lifestyle, i am wondering if children enjoy themselves much than our traditional way? Do they appreciate pure lotus mooncake as much as we were? I guess they can play candle through any smart phone, any cooking "mamasak" game through smart phone, and celebrate lantern festival in smart phone way. I don't know about others, but i enjoy my small time very much, all the cousins playing together, enjoying our innocent time. And i still miss those days. Hmm, will one day our cousins' children gather again like how we were last time? To everyone i know or i don't know, happy lantern festival..
