13 September 2000
By Jack Tan

The difficulty with being Chinese in Britain is that the country is not geared up to cope with Chinese festivals. There are no half-days on Chinese New Year's Eve, no races down the Thames during the Dragon Boat Festival, and no fuss made during the Month of the Hungry Ghosts (a Chinesey kind of Halloween). It is a shame that life in the UK is not more convenient for celebrating Chinese festivals because they are so fun.

As a kid, my favourite festival must have been the Mooncake Festival. The others were good but the Mooncake Festival was special because we were allowed to stay up late and play outside in the dark. A few days before mid-Autumn night, mum and dad would take us to choose our lanterns. The shops at that time were so full of lanterns that you could not see the shop front. There were the 12 Chinese zodiac animals, rockets, planes, cars and lots of other animals too. My sister would choose a rabbit because she was born in the Rabbit year, and my brother a horse. I was never quite happy because I was born in the year of the pig, but I would insist on buying the dragon in any case. We'd also buy 'pigs-in-baskets' too which is a pig-shaped sweetbread in a little basket.

When the evening came, our cousins would arrive with their lanterns and we'd all eat some mooncake before going out. Outside, in the gathering darkness, we could see lots of other lanterns dotted about belonging to other children. The adults would light our lanterns and then sit and talk. I would chase my cousins and siblings round because I had the dragon lantern, unless of course someone else also had a dragon lantern in which case we would have a mock battle. In between games we would eat our pig-breads, have more mooncake, and light sparklers. But when the last sparkler had gone, and we finally got tired, we were all taken back into the house and put to bed while the adults carried on talking, drinking and playing majong.