Sunday, September 14, 2008

Mid Autumn Festival

Despite it being a blatantly appalling spit in the face of the environment, tonight's Mid-Autumn festival was quite beautiful. The festival has something to do with the lunar calendar, but to be honest, I'm really not sure what. Regardless of what the original point of the festival was many centuries ago, today it basically translates too, "Lets fill the sky with burning china ball/tube things and watch them drift away towards some far away place where we don't have to watch the water buffalo choke to death on them."

The ironic thing about basing holidays around the lunar calendar is that the sky here is so polluted that sometimes it's hard to even see the moon. Upon reflection, I think this is why the festival is so popular -- when you can't see stars, you need to create them yourself.

Here's a video I shot of someone launching their china ball/tube thing: