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Mid-Autumn Moon Cake Festival
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When:
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14 Sep 2008 (various dates)
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Where:
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Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre
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The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of Hong Kong's most beautiful celebrations. Public parks are ablaze with many thousands of lanterns in all colours, sizes and shapes.
The festival commemorates a 14th-century uprising against the Mongols, when rebels wrote the call to revolt on pieces of paper and embedded them in cakes which they smuggled to compatriots. Today, in honour of this, people eat special yuek beng (moon cakes) - made of a whole range of ingredients - from ground lotus and sesame to all kinds of sugary fillings.
Along with these cakes, shops sell coloured Chinese paper lanterns, traditionally in the shapes of animals and, more recently, aeroplanes and space ships. On this family occasion parents allow children to stay up late and take them to high vantage points such as Victoria Peak where they light the lanterns and watch the huge autumn moon rise before eating their cakes.
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