Lion Dancing and Fire Breathing

This was definately one of those "I am very far from America" moments...

I'm not sure if you can tell, but most of the dancers/fire breathers are about 14 - 16 (one kid, who was smoking a cigarette before he had to go on, looked about 10). There's several groups of kids like this who go around the whole city performing for money. The video doesn't really capture it, but it 's pretty wild.

Moon Cake

Tomorrow is the Mid-Autumn Festival. I know what your thinking - it's not mid-autumn. On this side of the world people go by the lunar calendar as well as what ever the regular calendar is called, and according to the lunar calendar it's mid-August right now...which would also make you think it's not mid-autumn. But apparently the seasons are at different times over here and, yes, it is in fact the middle of autumn.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, also called the Moon Festival, is pretty much the biggest holiday here besides Tet. People celebrate by walking down the streets with lanterns (to show Cuoi - a boy who was sent to the moon - the way back to earth), dressing up as a mythical creature called Kylin (part lion, part dragon, and part some other animals) and dancing in the streets, and of course by eating moon cake. The streets have literally filled with moon cake vendors. And although I was told it's not as fun to eat them before the Moon Festival, I had to try one.

There are 2 different kinds of moon cake. One is brown and more dense, like the pictures above and below.

The other is white and much more chewy. A student described it as the kind that old people like to eat. It looks like this:

They taste...well...gross. As you can see, both kinds have an egg yolk, or a 'moon', in the center. Which, considering they are sweet cakes, is pretty weird, taste-wise. They both come with various kinds of fillings. Some type of fruit and chicken is common in the brown ones (again, weird) and lotus seed paste or watermelon seed paste is common in the white ones (which by itself wasn't so bad, but combined with the egg and the super chewy crust it was also...weird). I've heard that there's all sorts of variations, some with no egg, some that are more of a sponge-cake with fruit, and that they're very delicious. But what I've tried so far wasn't really what I'd call delicious.

But maybe it's my fault because I ate them before the Moon Festival.