P H Yang Photography | Fire Dragons, Lanterns and Cheeky Mooncakes

Fire Dragon Dances at Tai Hang

(This photo essay is vetted by CNN on

and was on the front page of CNN iReport on Sep 25-30, 2010. Click thru for details)

The rain god was not cooperating.

The fullest moon of the year could be enjoyed during the Mid-autumn Festival which is on the 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar. The festival was on September 22 this year.

Typhoon Fanapi swept through Taiwan with wind gusting as high as 112 miles (180 km) per hour and the hit Hong Kong starting September 20 with torential downpours.

Fortunately, the dark rain-clouds had their silver linings.

Sherri from New York visited the Festival Lanterns display at Victoria Park on September 21, Welcoming the Moon Day. She was pleasantly surprised to find that the very wet grounds had provided nice mirror images of the colorful lanterns.

Although it was drier on the next, Enjoying the Moon Day, the cloudy and hazy sky deterred most from relishing the full moon but not the Lanterns Carnival at Victoria Park which was almost filled to capacity.

Revelers also brought their own lanterns and many worn glow stix as well.

Tens of thousands witnessed the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance when a 67-metre-long dragon was studded with thousands of burning joss sticks at night dancing through the backstreets of Tai Hang in Causeway Bay.

The three-day (the third is known as Farewell to the Moon Day) event commemorates a series of mishaps that befell Tai Hang in 1880 culminating in a plague breaking out in this small Hakka village.

Appearing in the dream of a village elder, Buddha instructed the villagers to light firecrackers and perform a fire dragon dance for three days and nights during the Mid-Autumn Festival.

The plague ended after the event. Since then, the ritual has been repeated annually and passed down from generation to generation.

This year, the Fire Dragon danced into the Victoria Park Lantern Carnival at 10 pm and was cheered by the party-goers there.

At Pokfulam Village in Western District, a record 73-metre long Fire Dragon also danced with its smaller sibling on its 100th anniversary to a crowd of almost ten thousand.

Typical of G.O.D., the well-known retail lifestyle stores, are pushing the boundaries of modernising the traditional Chinese moon cake with their very own "cheeky mooncakes" featuring images of the bum in various state of undress and interesting gestures.

Traditionally, farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat mooncakes and pomelos under the moon together.