Tết Trung Thu, the children’s festival
In Vietnam the full harvest moon belongs to children more completely than almost any other festival in the region. The street fills after dark with đèn ông sao — five-pointed star lanterns on a stick — and with lion dancers, múa lân, moving door to door behind a drum. The pictures in this set are mostly of that: a procession, a lion who has lost the beat, a mask maker at his table, a mooncake being halved so it goes further.
The story told on this night is not Chang’e but Chú Cuội, a woodcutter carried up to the moon holding onto a banyan tree that tore loose from the earth. Nobody is punished in it and nobody is rescued — he is simply far away and looking down, which is why it sits so well at bedtime.
