Once more...

Once again it's been a while since I posted, but my life really does seem to be coming back to an even keel, so I hope I'll be more present henceforth.

It's Mid-Autumn Festival today!  with masks and lanterns and lion-dances and autumn rains.  Luckily the rain didn't come in time to wash out the neighbourhood children's party last Sunday night.  It was very pleasant, with many cellophane-and-tinsel stars, and little children singing bravely and endearingly and off-key one or two at a time.

We bought a wonderful lantern - also featuring cellophane, but with an inner circle of stiff clear plastic-or-similar, with black outline figures drawn on, and bamboo vanes above, such that warm air rising from a candle would turn the vanes to make a moving show of the figures.  That's the theory; in practice, the struggle to make it work will resume tonight.
I'd like to see it, too - it's figures from a well-know folk-motif here called the Mouse's Wedding.  I know there's quite a few folk-stories/songs which go by this name - in this one, a large part of the point is how to have a celebration in the mouse community without arousing hostilities from the cat - tricky, but the mice triumph!  :)