This year's National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival are on the same day. It's also the first time for Hong Kong people to celebrate them together. Maybe it doesn't mean much to HK people except for the long weekend holiday. Nonetheless, it's good for me to be here for this occasion. I bought a traditional lantern today. It's sad to see how they are replaced by battery-run plastic blown-up cartoon character lanterns that play music while the light bulbs go on.

There is a law in HK now to forbid "cooking wax", which is good for the plants and the concrete. But how many HK kids have the chance to look at a real fire and be amazed besides having Barbecue once or twice a year?

I do care more about the plants though. Because some kids would throw gaseline bottle, hairspray, god-knows-what into the fire in order to create an explosion. It's true, fire is exciting. Those who have been to Burning Man know best.

I am tempted to carry my fish lantern around in Causeway Bay (most crowded area on HK Island) tomorrow. But everyone was looking at me like I was some weird backward girl from the village as I walked home with it from the market.

Maybe in the near future, they'll be extinct in HK and we'll have to go to mainland China to buy this kind of lantern.

Happy National Day

and Mid-Autumn Festival

oct 1, 2001 wun