In Singapore the Torch Festival is held

Only a few decades ago, our perception used to connect the word Singapore with exotic pictures of East: harbor with junks and pearl-divers, narrow trading streets, dark rookeries for those who love opium, rickshas, ceiling fans in the bedrooms which are lazily rolling above beds tied with mosquito net… Current Singapore has gone into deep hiding from its romantic past – it is absolutely up-to-date, sparkling clean city made from concrete, glass and steel, where you may certainly find traffic jams, shopping malls, banks, cargo ships, and oil tankers in the port.

The torch festivals are held throughout Eastern Asia. In Singapore, this day became a part of larger autumn festival, however, flashlights still represent its main mark. Actually, every Chinese family decorates the house on such occasion.

Among three main festival platforms, there are colorful embankments near the river, Chinatown, and Chinese garden in Jurong. In this wonderful landscape park with 17-girgered bridge, pagoda, tea house, and arbor, you may see torches of different types and forms. Thousand citizens of Singapore come here to savor enlightening objects of art and let their own flashlights float freely along an expanse of lake.

This holiday is especially beloved by children. They are keen on tasting «moon cakes», prepared from milled grits of lotus and sesame. By tradition, which has not been pursued anymore, in the centre of such cakes people embed salty yolk of hen egg. Additionally, guests of holiday love to observe the festivals and dances performed with rhythmical sounds of drums. For adults the attendance of Chinese garden during the Torch Festival is a way to absorb in the past. At nights, even in the bright of full moon, the entire Singapore modernity recedes into background, giving place to the ancient, time-honored traditions.