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| children enjoying their paper lanterns. Retaining good traditions proves to be an effective way to combat the negative effects of modern lifestyle |
Several dozens of children are forming a paper lantern procession on the sidewalk. Each child, lit up with the joy on the face and the candle beams inside the lantern, walks one after another in a circle, singing in chorus favorite songs.
This is a typical scene found during the few weeks of Tt Trung Thu (Mid-Autumn Festival), traditionally a feast for children in Vietnam. However, in HCM City, the scene is now almost history as modern lifestyle has invaded urban households.
The Mid-Autumn Festival arrives around the middle of September. In the old days—about half a century ago—when video games and the Internet had yet to be conceived, children were eager to celebrate the festival specially held for them. It goes without saying that moon cakes are indispensable to the Mid-Autumn Festival. But to the kids at that time, one item was even more important: The paper lantern.
Weeks before the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, children in the city implored their parents to buy one paper lantern for them. Some even asked for more than one. The then Saigonese childhood was often associated with, among others, the world of colorful paper lanterns. To them, being submerged in hundreds of lanterns in all shapes and sizes when the Mid-Autumn Festival came was an immortal childhood experience.
The kids’ treasured lanterns were made of transparent paper glued on a bamboo frame. At the center of the frame was a wire coil strong enough to hold a candle upright. One of the most exciting things about the lantern was that it could be made into almost whatever children could manage to imagine—from their household pets, wild animals and automobiles to spacecraft. In the skillful hands of craftspeople, paper lanterns stepped into the dream world of children.
During the Mid-Autumn Festival, that dream world lasted for several weeks on end. Every night, often under the guidance of adults, children in the same blocks of houses flocked together, lit candles inside their lanterns, made procession and played traditional games which required a lot of physical activities. “Accidents” occasionally happened when a paper lantern caught fire, making its owner burst into tears. After the procession, the children went home to taste moon cakes reserved for them.
Of course, not all children in Saigon could enjoy that happiness as their families were too poor to afford neither a lantern nor a traditional cake. Those children expected a time when they could join their peers in a lantern procession.
Nowadays, Saigonese children’s eagerness for and delight in Mid-Autumn Festival and paper lantern procession have faded away substantially. Aside from competition from battery-operated, Chinese-made lanterns, fast pace of life, video games and other kinds of modern entertainment around the corner are all behind that fact.
Pay a visit to Phu Trung Quarter in District 11 and you’ll see how the tradition has changed. This area is the “craft village” in HCM City that provides Saigonese children with their favorite paper lanterns. Lantern making during Mid-Autumn Festival used to provide craftspeople in Phu Trung and its neighborhood with a lucrative business. During the festive season, tens of thousands of lanterns were produced to satisfy children’s need. Sadly, like the lantern procession, the hectic scene in Phu Trung is now just a memory.
Meanwhile, the Mid-Autumn Festival, a children’s celebration, seems to have turned into an event for adults with moon cakes being a common gift exchanged between companies. In fact, it is apparent that the moon cake business is less lucrative this year because the global economic downturn still drags on.
Entrepreneurial Saigonese are still obsessed with how to make money out of the moon cake. But Saigonese should also be mindful of the disappearing lantern village and their children’s indifference to traditional customs.
When paper lanterns are overwhelmed by violent video games in kids’ timetables, a high crime rate among the youth is often inevitable.
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