Lantern Festival at the Chinese Garden

Today was the closing day for the Lantern festival (also called Mid-Autumn Festival) in the park next to my apartment. This celebration is a very big deal in China and is associated to many traditional items such as the moon pie and lanterns (more on that:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival)

Of course it was an amazing opportunity for taking pictures (with that setting the pictures almos took themselves...). Here are some of them:

There was a very fascinating show with several artists including this girl made out of rubber (she has only been doing this for four years, so she must be either a mutant or some kind of alien to perform things like this...)

The tree is a wishing tree. You write your wish on a ribbon that has these golden coins on both ends and throw it at the tree. As far as I understood it must get tangled in the tree for it to come true (sounds easy, but, believe me it was not so easy for everyone. In fact, a chinese girl managed to throw it backwards and one hit the frontal fence... I guess they were not the national feminine handball team, after all)

This is one of the lanterns. They are huge constructions made out of paper. I am still not very sure about the safety of the high-voltage and paper, but it looks really pretty.

Still only paper.

Beatiful building next to the lake and... what are these lights in the back?

Giant swan paper-lanterns floating on the lake, of course! What else would it be?! (Just so you get an idea, the little swans are probably my size...)

Looks like a temple, but it is a turtle museum. 

And what better way to wrap things up than more chinese clichés such as the red lanterns and, of course, fireworks. 

Again a super long post, but you'll see, worse times will come when I'll be stuck in the lab and all the pictures you'll get will be my Excel data-sheets. So enjoy while it lasts! Good night.