Entree Kibbles: Mid-Autumn Festival 2021 Street Light Up @ Chinatown [Singapore]

Saturday, September 25, 2021

Mid-Autumn Festival 2021 Street Light Up @ Chinatown [Singapore]

The mid-autumn festival took place a few days ago on 21 September 2021 and the following set of photographs were actually taken on 09 September; I know, I am super delayed but work has been busy recently and my weekends had been occupied with activities!

Well, late is better than never and let's go back to the very start of the photo-taking session, when we exited Chinatown MRT station, to the pedestrian street known as Pagoda Street.

Given the pandemic, activities were severely curtailed and you don't really feel the atmosphere of the mid-autumn festival. There were shops selling lanterns but even then, business didn't look promising when there was already a dearth of customers.

As it was still daytime, and I came straightaway after work, I decided to go for dinner with my dad first. No prize for guessing what's our dinner; it's definitely Kazan Japanese Cuisine at Chinatown Complex food centre!

The lights were already switched off but with the daylight, it's quite hard to take good pictures. But without a tripod, and a lack of deep understanding on using my camera, it's a definite that I would have a hard time taking photographs at night! You shall see later.

Another standalone store offering lanterns and also mooncakes. Nowadays, it's quite easy to secure mooncakes as every bakery would concentrate on making mooncakes for sale during this period. And without travelling being an option, I understand that local sales for mooncake have skyrocketed these two years.

Lanterns again; sadly, I am no longer of the age where I get excited over lanterns, especially the kind lighted by candles. Maybe the pandemic has changed everything. Even on the actual day of the mid-autumn festival, I didn't see that many children carrying a lantern around the neighbourhood.

Perfect timing after dinner as the sky had darkened, showing us the beautiful illumination from festive lightings. These lights weren't put up because of the festival though as you would have seen the same setup during lunar new year.

Street light up along South Bridge Road; given my amateur photo skills, I am not sure which manual setting I had adjusted that overexposed the hanging lights across the road.

Slightly better; at the very least, I can roughly make out the design. They were, in essence, mooncakes of different designs. But if you bake mooncakes, as I did, you would know the amount of molds out there is staggering!

The iconic People's Park Complex; if this building was ever demolished, it would be a landscape changer for the entire Chinatown area. Oh well, we could have said the same for the Pearl Bank apartments but they were eventually redeveloped anyway, despite the petitions.

More on the snowskin mooncakes street lights. To me, they appeared more like biscuits than mooncakes since the latter is usually much thicker and chunkier.

12-meter centerpiece in the middle of Eu Tong Sen Street and New Bridge Road. As compared to past installations for mid-autumn festival, I have only one word for this year version; stunning!

Installed in parts, it did give the visual impression that Chang Er, goddess of the moon, was ascending to the moon palace, as per legend. Of course, there is more than one legend when it comes to mid-autumn festival but Chang Er is iconic, together with the jade rabbit, lanterns and mooncakes.

Overhanging street lighting across New Bridge Road. As expected, over exposed and my poor photography skill was unable to improve the conditions. I think I need to take up some courses soon so that I can make better use of my DSLR.

Hanging lanterns include images of rabbits, traditional mooncakes and flowers. From an article on Straits Times, I noted there are about 900 lanterns in total; with the overhanging ones likely taking up a majority.

Larger ones, aside from the centerpiece, were on the ground, featuring people, trees, rabbits, and items like wine jars, mooncakes, pomelos etc.

Back of the centerpiece.

Middle section between Eu Tong Sen Street and New Bridge Road, where many decorative lanterns were placed. I think the pity is that the roads were not closed and many people couldn't stand closer for a selfie / wefie.

View of Pagoda Street; it's slightly more crowded although still incomparable to the scene pre-pandemic. Do you miss the life then? I sure do as people contribute to vibrancy and a livelier festive atmosphere.

I bet Dad feel the same way too.

These hanging lights had the jade rabbit hugging the pomelos! I have no idea why pomelos were part of the mid-autumn festival and decided to google. Click here for more information!

Last segment for the lanterns. I understand that the wires in the lanterns were necessary for sculpting but I wonder if they could wrap the wires with white tubing instead so that they were less noticeable.