- The celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival is based on the lunar calendar and held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese and Vietnamese calendars. In Singapore, this festival is being celebrated at Gardens by the Bay with nightly events being held until Saturday, September 18th. The Mid-Autumn Festival is similar to other harvest festivals like Thanksgiving inNorth America or Chuseok in South Korea and is celebrated by gathering with your loved ones, giving thanks for what you have, and praying for things you hope to gain over the next year.
From now until September 18th, Gardens by the Bay will light up nightly with the festival celebrating the importance of the past together with the excitement of the future. Set up in the grounds of the garden, there will be enormous lantern dioramas that illustrate different Asian stories — the largest is 27 meters wide! Another impressive display close to the Supertree Grove is the Colonnade of Lights which features 4,000 lanterns that were painted by members of the Chinese and Vietnamese communities in anticipation of the festival.
The Colonnade of Lights | Courtesy of Gardens by the Bay
The Ten Suns lantern set — the widest lantern set at Mid-Autumn measuring 27 meters across | Courtesy of Gardens By The Bay
There will be many interactive, community events during the festival. Nightly performances by the National Arts Council, craft booths where kids and adults alike can decorate lanterns and learn calligraphy will keep festival-goers of all ages entertained. Storytellers from The Theatre Practice and the National Library Board will also be telling traditional and modern stories of the moon, keeping with the theme of this year’s festival. And if you’re feeling futuristic, visit Ron Arad’s 720° art installation. This work, curated by the Singapore International Festival of Arts, projects different content daily onto a screen that is composed of an installation of 5,600 silicon cords that are 8 meters long and set in a circle 18 meters in diameter. Try to go hungry, because there are many exciting things to sample as the Food Street is being set up with mouth-watering and intriguing dishes like salted egg fries and chilli crab mantou.
