Moon festival.

Moon festival is an important aspect on the Chinese lunar calendar as the occasion celebrates mid autumn and the time to harvest. Moon festival is a time of making and eating Moon cakes. Shops all around the city spring up selling packaged Moon cakes, which would equate to shops selling Christmas cakes. Moon cakes look very similar to a round pastry pie about the size of a dinner plate. They can be sweet eg Green Bean or savoury eg Pork and the inside centre is a whole egg. The significance is the yellow of the new and full moon. I have only tasted a very small Green Bean moon cake, which was quite nice, sweet not at all bean tasting with a consistency similar to shortbread. The savoury ones apparently don’t have an appealing taste at all. The children make lanterns and Tue my teaching assistant, tells me at night the children put a candle in the centre of the lantern and walk around their town and village. At school students, teachers and teaching assistants all wore our Ao dai’s, the traditional Vietnamese dress. We have a big assembly where the children parade with their lanterns, we watch plays telling ancient fables about Moon festival, there is a dragon dance weather permitting and various ethnic dances. Friday was basically devoted to acknowledging and celebrating Moon festival. The festive spirit only slightly hampered by the persistent rain which caused the cancellation of the dragon dance. I have managed to snap Uyen my teaching assistant in An Phu Campus and lots of the boys in their traditional Ao Dai's. Boys seem to wear either the same traditional, the circles as the moon, in varying colours, although red and blue would be the most popular. The girls look beautiful with their long colourful tunics and trousers underneath in a large array of vibrant colours patterns and styles.