Autumnal Equinox, Chinese Style

2001 Events: Autumn Moon Festival

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Autumnal Equinox

The Sun rises for the first time in six months! (at the South Pole). The sun casts no shadow! (at the equator). The Autumnal Equinox is one of the four corners of the seasonal year and represents the first day of Autumn.

The length of day and night are the same on the Equinox

One of the import stores had a huge golden dragon hanging from their ceiling. The circular shape of it's body accentuated the curves of the ramp corkscrewing around it.

Autumn Moon Festival

Chinatown celebrates the Equinox with a harvest festival honoring the Autumn Moon.

History of the Festival

I haven't been to the Autumn Moon Festival for a few years and my pal V-ness has never been, so this year we decided to go together...

Festival Entertainment

Our Entertainment Correspondent found lots of things to entertain her...

Parading through the Festival

Apparently, there's a huge parade through the city that ends in Chinatown where the festival was held. We managed to catch the tail end of it.

Drummers on parade The lion dancers didn't have much room to do their thing, so they mostly walked slowly through the crowd. This was the only lion we saw, I guess they save the really big, elaborate ones for Chinese New Year. We didn't see any Dragons dancing in the street either... The lion guys had their own drum corps following them, but for some reason there were more guys crashing symbols than dancing or drumming. V-ness and I don't speak or read Chinese so a lot of it was a mystery to us.