Chinatown prepares for Mid-Autumn Festival

We are still in the midst of the popularly known as "Hungry Ghost Festival", more appropriately known as Zhong Yuan Jie 中元节, but this does not prevent the shops and traditional Chinese pastry shops from preparing for the Mid-Autumn Festival, Zhong Qiu Jie 中秋节.

While in the past, the streets of Chinatown, the part which is the focal point of shoppers - Gu Chia Chwee in Hokkien or Gnau Chei Shui in Cantonese or better known to the younger folks as Niu Che Shui 牛车水 - would be lined with paper lanterns of all shapes, colour and sizes, hanging from above, with the assortments of moon cakes laid on the tables as days got nearer towards the 15th of the 8th Lunar Month, these days, celebrations take on a grander scale.

Props and pillars were almost in place, to prepare for the banners and lightings, transforming Chinatown (mainly along New Bridge Rd and Eu Tong Sen St) into a fairy land at night. We await to see what's in store from the creative designers for a Chinatown in Mid-Autumn.

While the newer restaurants and hotels started work through their outlets, pamphlets and credit cards, offering all kinds of moon cake, very active in their marketing, the lao jiao pai (the old signage) Chinese pastry shops like Dai Tong (Da Tong 大同) and Dai Zhong Kok (Da Zhong Guo 大中国) continued with their preparations, almost quietly. They know and most of us oldies know, when the time comes, we would still want to have that piece of good 'ol mooncake that we are used to. The older men and womenfolk would still be queuing up to buy their share.

A quick run of a part of Chinatown got me the pictures here to share with you. Ah, there's quite an assortment of different moon cakes and cakes for the occasion, and each dialect group has its own specialty.