Mid-Autumn Festival (Trung thu) – Tet holiday for children in Vietnam
Mid-autumn Festival is one of traditional celebration that you should know before your trip to Vietnam – Best places to visit in Vietnam
There are hundreds of festivals each year in Vietnam. Besides the Tet Holiday, the Mid-Autumn festival is one of the most famous festivals and it is a traditional celebration for Vietnamese children. The holiday is time for parents to catch up with their children after a completed harvest.
Mid-Autumn Festival in Vietnam – Best places to visit in Vietnam
The Mid-Autumn festival is held on the 15th day on the 8th lunar month (often in late September or early October) in the middle of autumn. On this day, the adults and their parents prepare many different foods – Moon cakes, candies, biscuits, jellies, and fruit, such as grapefruit, bananas, apples, mango, etc. All are designed with fun symbols such as: dog, cat, mouse …
Trung Thu food for children with funny shapes – Best places to visit in Vietnam
Moon cakes are the specific cakes for this festival, which is made from sausage, meat, egg, dried fruit, pumpkin’s seed, peanut. Moon cakes symbolize Luck, Happiness, Health and Wealth on the Mid-Autumn day.
Moon cakes – Best places to visit in Vietnam
Besides that, the children are provided with many nice handmade lanterns – star lanterns, flower lanterns and diverse funny masks such as clown mask, lion mask, prince or princess mask for the special performance in the evening of the full moon. Traditional toys in this festival are handmade such as: toy figurine, which is made from glutinous rice powder in form of edible figurine such as animals, flowers or characters in folk stories, others are paper doctors, payper boat….
Nowadays, although some of the traditional toys have been replaced by modern toys, the meaning and the performance has been kept and developed. It is certain that the Mid-Autumn day is important and famous for Vietnamese people. Everyone wants to join in it. And it really is a good example of the traditional culture of the Vietnamese.
The main scene of the Mid-Autumn is that children with beautiful lanterns, wear funny masks, perform fantastic lion dances, sing folklore songs in the house’s grounds or in the streets when the moon is rising. It is really an exciting show.
Trung Thu lion dance – Best places to visit in Vietnam
The other most visible tradition related to Tet Trung Thu is the lion dance, which were performed by groups of children parade through the streets – some of the children maintain a martial beat on drums, while others control an extravagantly decorated ‘lion’ crafted from molds and paper. These lion dances are fascinating, and huge amounts of children, ranging from little kids to teenagers, take part.
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