Full moon, moon cakes and Moon Festival in L.A. tonight

Traditionally, the Chinese Moon Festival always takes place on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, a date that hovers around the autumn equinox of the solar-based calendar. But I’ll make it easy on you: It’s Sunday this year.

Sometimes known as the Lantern Festival or simply Mid-Autumn Festival, it’s a kind of harvest or Thanksgiving celebration where friends and family unite to mark the 3,000-year-old tradition. And though Singapore celebrated Sept. 1 with eye-popping lanterns of Hello Kitty and other characters (think a glowing Macy’s Parade at night; click here for photos), you haven’t missed the boat in Los Angeles’ celebration.

The event takes place tonight from 5:30 to 10 p.m. at the central plaza in Chinatown (947-951 N. Broadway near College Street) where the Shaolin Warriors of Chinatown and magician Minh Tran will perform, and Miss L.A. Chinatown will explain the history of the Moon Festival.

Free moon cakes will be distributed around 8 p.m. The traditional “cake” (not what we think of as cake) is made with a wide variety of fillings including bean paste and salted duck eggs — with egg yolk to give it that glow. At Saturday’s event, you can watch and sample the cakes — a mix of red bean, lotus seeds and egg yolks — made by Phoenix Bakery in Chinatown.

And you’ll be able to check out the almost-full moon, care of telescopes provided by Griffith Observatory.

– Mary Forgione, Los Angeles Times staff writer

[Photo: Moon cake; Cherilyn Parsons / For the Los Angeles Times]

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This entry was posted on Saturday, September 13, 2008 at 12:22 am by Mary Forgione and is filed under Asia, California, China, Festival, Los Angeles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.