"The Mid-Autumn Festival is Coming! " a Singapore Travel Page by DarkRay

The Mid-Autumn Festival (cos it's celebrated in the middle of Chinese autumn), or the Lantern Festival (cos lantern displays are part of the festivities) is a celebration of abundance and togetherness. It falls on the 15th day of the 8th Lunar Month of the Chinese Calendar, which will coincide with the Solar Calendar's Autumn Equinox.

On this day, farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season. Traditionally, Chinese family members and friends will gather together to admire the mid-autumn harvest moon, which is often at its fullest and brightest), while eating mooncakes and pomeloes. Brightly lit lanterns are often carried around by children making merry on this day. There are also various stories regarding how the festivities come about for those interested.

As Singapore has a Chinese-majority population, it should come as no surprise that the Mid-Autumn is celebrated in Singapore, although it is not a public holiday. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different varieties. My favourite kind is the type with Snow Skin (versus the traditional baked variety), which is actually a sort of soft candy made from glutinous rice.

I actually love to cook and bake, and so this year, I decided to make my own instead of buying them from the stores. This way, I can finetune the flavour of the Snow Skin as well as its associated fillings to my hearts content! It was great fun and I think I did quite well in the end. The photo above shows my proud creations. In order, they are:

White: Vanilla & Valrhona
- Vanilla Snow Skin with Valrhona 64% Chocolate Paste
- The calming fragrance of Vanilla to complement the velvety richness of Valrhona chocolate

Yellow: Rum & Raisin
- Rum Snow Skin with Golden Raisin Paste
- The sweet enticing aroma of rum to synergise with the fruity flavours of golden raisins

Green: Tea & Chocolate
- Green Tea Snow Skin with 73.5% Premium Dark Chocolate Paste
- The wholesome goodness of green tea to contrast with the sinful decadence of premium dark chocolate

The base of all the pastes is White Lotus Paste, which I feel is not only less sweet and thus healthier than other paste, it has a more neutral taste, which lends well to infusing other flavours such as chocolate into it. The Chinese character on the mooncakes means "Autumn". :-)

The Merlion is probably Singapore's most famous tourism mascot. This Merlion structure is located at Merlion Park, which is located in the Central Business District. The building in the background is the luxurious Fullerton Hotel.

Although Singapore is when I hail from, I do not think I will be developing this page anytime soon.

I view local knowledge as a double edge sword. Although as a local, I do know plenty about Singapore, but as a local, I will see things a little differently from that of a tourist. We also probably have different expectations of what that may constitute to us as being fun and interesting.

Thus, for sharing of the information I know of Singapore, I will try to provide them in forums instead. But if you are looking for ideas, I do have a list of interesting attractions to help jumpstart your planning.

Feel free to contact me by VTmail directly too. I loved visiting nice restaurants in Singapore and have a hobby of staying at the various 4 and 5 stars hotel whenever I have the chance. Hey, if I cannot find the time to travel out of Singapore, I will just have to live it up here. :-)

We Singaporeans are also a "Kiasu" (literally translated as being "afraid to lose") lot and as a result, there are already a lot of very comprehensive pages about Singapore around in VT. A word of caution though is that the top rated pages are far from being "bite size" tidbits and may be somewhat of an information overload.

If you must, let me recommend you the Singapore page for my brother, xuessium. It is still very overweight in my opinion (sorry bro, :-pppppp), but highly informative. You can find that here.

This picture was taken from Marina City Park at 9pm. The building at the leftmost is Ritz Carlton Hotel, while the building with the illuminated roof is Millenia Tower.