Jessica the Flowers Genie

Customs of Ethnic Minorities on Mid-autumn Day

Dai Ethnic People

Customs of sacrificing and worshipping the moon equally flourish in minorities. On the evening of the Mid-Autumn Festival, moon worship is popular among the Dai people in Yunnan. Based on the Dai legend, the moon was once Yan Jian, the third son of the Emperor of Heaven. Yan Jian was a heroic and strong youth who led the Dai people to beat enemies and won Dai folks over.

Later, after his unfortunate death, he became the moon and rose into the sky giving off the soft moonlightand giving light to the Dai people in the dark. Every Moon cakes Festival, in order to hunt for festival game men go up onto the hills and shoot fire finches and pheasants with powder shotguns early in the morning.

Young women are busy going to lakes and ponds catching fish, and preparing for autumn mooncake festival dinners. Grannies are busy pounding glutinous rice and cooking food of various sizes. They put a circular glutinous rice pie on each corner of the table and imbed a stick of unlit joss stick in each pie. Once the moon comes up over the mountain forest, they will light the joss sticks and all family members will start to “worship the moon”.

Then they’ll fire powder shotguns to the sky to honor Yan Jian, the hero. Finally, all family members will happily sit at the little square table, tasting food, talking, laughing and enjoying the moon. They don’t finish until they have enjoyed themselves to the full.

Source: http://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/culture/middle-autumn-festival-custom.htm

In Vietnam, Têt-Trung-Thu (tet-troong-thoo) or the Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the most popular family holidays. It is held on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month.

Vietnamese families plan their activities around their children on this special day. In a Vietnamese folklore, parents were working so hard to prepare for the harvest that they left the children playing by themselves. To make up for lost time, parents would use the moon cakes festival as an opportunity to show their love and appreciation for their children.

Appropriately, autumn mooncake is also called the Children’s Festival. In the United States, this tradition continues in many Vietnamese-American communities. Trung-Thu activities are often centered around children and education. Parents buy lanterns for their children so that they can participate in a candlelit lantern procession at dawn. Lanterns represent brightness while the procession symbolizes success in school.

Vietnamese markets sell a variety of lanterns, but the most popular children’s lantern is the star lantern. Other children’s activities include arts and crafts in which children make face masks and lanterns. Children also perform traditional Vietnamese dances for adults and participate in contests for prizes and scholarships. Unicorn dancers are also very popular in Trung-Thu festivities.

Like the Chinese, Vietnamese parents tell their children fairy tales and serve mooncakes and other special treats under the silvery moon. A favorite folklore is about a carp that wanted to become a dragon. The carp worked and worked and eventually transformed itself into a dragon. This is the story behind the mythical symbol, Cá hóa Rông. Parents use this story to encourage their children to work hard so that they can become whatever they want to be.

There’s also a story about how the Moon Lady ascended to the moon. A man named Chu Coi found a lucky tree that had special healing powers. Because this tree was sacred, people were forbidden to urinate at the foot of this tree. Unfortunately, Chu Coi’s wife, Chi Hang forgot the rule and urinated on the tree. On day, while she was sitting on the tree’s branch, the tree started to grow and grow. Eventually, it reached the moon, Since then, Chi Hang lived on the moon for the rest of her life as a punishment for desecrating the sacred tree.

Source: http://www.familyculture.com/holidays/tettrungthu.htm

Imagine wedding catering where bad food is served. What will that do for the remainder of the evening? My first and most important tip is, you should sample the food. Anything can look good but the real test is your taste buds. So, go try whatever it is you want to eat at your reception.

Wedding catering is certainly a major responsibility for any couple. However, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It really comes down to how much money you have budgeted; there’s no way around this point; and what resources you have in your town or surrounding area. You will find catering services where ever you’re looking, no doubt about that. Some will have everything in stock for you to choose from while others will just pitch you with appetizer,dinner and dessert menus. What you’ll find out is that the smaller organizations have multiple grades of food and service to meet your budget and taste-buds, while places like an event hall or country club usually create complete packaged deals.

Like I just said, you won’t have to go anywhere else with bigger event catering services because these places provide everything you will need: the wedding hall, the party reception room and all the small details behind the scene you may not knw about yet. Understand you’ll be expected to pay a premium for this kind of service.

You may not find what you’re wanting from a larger place so take a look at the other options, specialty caterers and mom and pop catering companies. Organizations that specialize in weddings or restaurant caterers can also provide most of what you want. Prices are usually cheaper this route but you all have to deal with more people to make your dream wedding come to fruition. Ask a lot of questions and get pricing to compare with the full service event companies. Restaurants and the food catering companies mainly deliver dinner, dessert and beverages and, they may offer service staff for a fee. Most of these companies seem to have a chef or managing owner that was in the business elsewhere and decided to go into business for themself or in a partnership. So they know what’s going on and can probably come through with what you and your fiance want.

One main benefit with these guys is, you’ll get to meet and regularly speak to the chef and manager whenever you need help. The major pitfall is, you’ll have to take more of the planning and managing on than you may feel comfortable doing. Find out if this is the case and what you’re prepared to do about it.

Now that you have some basic information in hand, it’s time to start your search for the best wedding catering company you can find. You can do it online or through traditional offline methods such as magazines and the yellow pages. Try both. What will surprise you is you’ll come up with two separate lists. See which one fits your feelings and desires and go with them. Good luck!

Source: http://www.floweradvisor.com.sg/lifestyle/women/weddings/150416/wedding_catering_tip/

See Also : Mid autumn festival, Moon cakes festival, Autumn mooncake