HCMC – The Imperial Citadel of Thang Long in Ba Dinh District, Hanoi, will organize a virtual exhibition on September 19 to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, one of the biggest annual traditional festivals.
Themed “Mid-Autumn Festival Reunion”, the exhibition will feature images, paintings, writings and videos about the Mid-Autumn Festival by various artists and cultural experts.
According to the Thang Long-Hanoi Heritage Conservation Center, the exhibition will be conducted in Vietnamese and English to enable domestic and international audiences to enjoy the Mid-Autumn Festival atmosphere and learn about the role of the festival in Vietnamese culture.
Viewers will be invited to explore different traditions of a typical Mid-Autumn Festival in Vietnam, especially the Mid-Autumn tray of the Hanoi people in the early 20th century. The tray is set up based on documents and paintings by French researcher Henri Oger and Vietnamese writers Nguyen Tuan, Phan Ke Binh and Vu Bang.
The traditional Mid-Autumn Festival tray comprises mooncakes, fruit-shaped green bean cakes, colorful figurines and other specialties of Hanoi in autumn such as nuggets, persimmons, custard apples, bananas, grapefruits and chestnuts.
Viewers will also be able to learn about the diversity of traditional Mid-Autumn Festival toys via the archives of the Quai Branly Museum and the French School of the Far East. The toys were made by artisans in craft villages near the imperial citadel.
In addition, the exhibition will feature videos of Vietnamese historian Le Van Lan talking about various themes of the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival and of artisan Quach Thi Bac making cotton swans, a special toy of the Hanoi people during the festival.
The “Mid-Autumn Festival Reunion” exhibition will be held online via the websites, hoangthanhthanglong.vn and trungbayonline.hoangthanhthanglong.vn.
The Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, is held on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar year. People believe the moon is at its brightest and fullest on this day.
This year, the Mid-Autumn Day will be on September 21.
