Celebrating an Asian tradition: September’s Moon Festival
Moon cakes, which have outlasted dynasties and regimes in China, are a special treat made for the Moon or Mid-Autumn Festival. The festival is traditionally a time to celebrate with some luxury snacks and particularly moon cakes, a rich concoction made with a wide variety of fillings including bean paste and salted duck eggs and, in recent versions, gourmet ice cream and chocolate. (Cherilyn Parsons / For the Los Angeles Times)
Festivals at this time of year can have many names: Moon, Mid-Autumn or Lantern festivals. In Singapore on Sept. 1, the festival became a lantern display of familiar characters such as Hello Kitty and others. (How Hwee Young / EPA)
Brightly lighted lanterns are traditionally part of autumn festivities. Singapore celebrated on Sept. 1. (How Hwee Young / EPA)
Giant floating lanterns of Japanese cartoon characters were part of the Sept. 1 festivities in Singapore called Lantern Fantasy 2008. (How Hwee Young / EPA)
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Hello Kitty is a dominant lantern theme in Singapore’s Lantern Fantasy 2008. (How Hwee Young / EPA)
People ride on motorcycles past shops’ lanterns for Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations in a street in the old quarter of Hanoi, Vietnam, on Thursday. The Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrated in China, Vietnam and other Asian nations, falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar, a date that hovers around the autumn equinox of the solar calendar. (Hoang Dinh Nam AFP/Getty Images)
In Hanoi, Vietnam, five-pointed-star-shaped lanterns are sold for the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival at Hang Ma Street in the Old Quarter neighborhood. The Moon Festival falls on Sept. 14 this year, sending children parading in the streets, singing with colorful lanterns in hand. (Chitose Suzuki / Associated Press)
Moon cakes made for the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival are sold in a store in Hanoi,. (Chitose Suzuki / Associated Press)
