Nostalgia for “homemade” mid-autumn lanterns…

(Baonghean) -Every Mid-Autumn Festival, seeing the children shining with lanterns of all shapes and colors emitting cheerful music, my heart aches with memories of the moon seasons of my childhood with "homemade" star lanterns...

At that time, my family was still very poor. My father was a soldier stationed in Son Tra peninsula (Da Nang) and my mother was a secretary at the Provincial Party Committee whose main duty was to type. Both my maternal and paternal families in the countryside were poor. They worked hard all year round in the fields and gardens, and had many children, so they could not help much. My mother had 3 children on her own, and had to take care of her mother-in-law and her 9 younger siblings.

Loving our mother, although we always longed to see the star lanterns with red painted handles and colorful cellophane paper pasted on them by the neighborhood kids on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, my three brothers and I often told each other to make our own lanterns to celebrate so we wouldn’t feel so sad. Two weeks before the Mid-Autumn Festival, we had to prepare glue, split bamboo to make a frame, then cut paper to paste on (usually newspaper or cement bags, a little more “luxurious” paper was cut from envelopes containing official documents and letters, then colored with wax because at that time colored paper was very rare and quite expensive). My brother was very skillful, so after only 2-3 days, we could complete our homemade Mid-Autumn Festival lanterns.

We did it with all our passion and excitement. As a result, on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, my youngest brother had a pretty lantern that fit in his hand. I am a girl so the lantern had two fancy paper tassels and the frame was also covered with tassels. My brother's star lantern was always the biggest in the neighborhood and took a whole week to finish. In addition to the Mid-Autumn lanterns, we also saved dried grapefruit seeds to string into strings to light up and pop during the lantern processions and feasts. My brother also played around with drawing and cutting out masks of smiling clowns for himself and my youngest brother. I was also given a crown made of hard cardboard to wear on my head...

There were many poor children in our military area (the area reserved for military families) who also made their own star lanterns, but they were often warped and distorted, while our lanterns were always the most beautiful and unique, so at that time I was always proud. On the full moon night, my older brother often carried the youngest brother on his shoulder like an adult, and beside me was a small child holding a homemade star lantern with a tiny candle in the middle, joining the children with the bustling sound of drums "tung ring..." in the upper and lower hamlets, then returning to the village hall to celebrate the feast. Although there were only a few pickled persimmons, grapefruits, custard apples, guavas from the garden, popcorn, roasted peanuts prepared by the women's association and the youth union members, and homegrown performances, it was really fun. After the feast, each group started to spread out and invite each other to play fighting, hide and seek, blind man's bluff, dragon and snake up to the clouds...

Nowadays, when material life is increasingly improved, rustic pleasures are gradually disappearing. Like everyone else, on the Mid-Autumn Festival, I often buy for my children and grandchildren a full tray of five fruits, moon cakes, and funny battery-powered lamps that can display images thanks to the effect of continuous movement, with sparkling colors and images. However, I still feel "bland, lacking" and have a sore nose when remembering the homemade star lanterns with sparkling candlelight, the joyful drum sounds in my childhood memories... There are things that people cannot buy even if they lack them, and cannot return even if they dream of them...

Khanh Ly