Celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival In Hong Kong 2024: Mooncakes, Lanterns And More

Celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival in Hong Kong by eating mooncakes, making lanterns and gazing at the full moon. Teach your littles ones more about Moon Festival with special themed activities.

The Hong Kong Mid-Autumn Festival is a great holiday to celebrate with the family whether you’re a born-and-raised 852 kid or a newbie to this bustling city. This traditional festival is all about bringing the family together, eating plenty of mooncakes and encouraging your kids to get involved with at-home activities. We’ve got the lowdown on Moon Festival history and customs so you can enjoy it with the whole gang. Here’s our 2024 Mid-Autumn Festival Guide for families in Hong Kong.

Read More: Sassy Mama’s Guide To Festivities Around The Globe

When Is Hong Kong’s Mid-Autumn Festival 2024?

This year we’re celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival on Tuesday, 17 September 2024, which means the fun starts from the evening of Monday, 16 September 2024. Get your lanterns ready to head to outdoor parks and playgrounds!

Read More: The Best Outdoor Playgrounds And Parks In Hong Kong

The History Of Mid-Autumn Festival

Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the most colourful events in Hong Kong, lighting up the city with bright lanterns, light shows and fiery dragon dances.

Usually celebrated as a harvest festival, this long-held tradition dates back to the Tang dynasty (from around 600 AD). It would also give workers far away a chance to return home to their families. At the time, people would gather to make offerings of food and drink to the Moon Goddess, Chang’e, paying their respects and giving thanks for the crops harvested during the year. Legend has it that Chang’e blesses her worshippers with beauty, so people lit lanterns in her honour (and to make sure that she can see them clearly from the sky).

The Mid-Autumn Festival is all about light, so a household really wouldn’t be complete without a fabulous lantern to guide the way. Historically, the lanterns were made from paper and lit with candles but nowadays they tend to be plastic, battery operated (safe and reusable is always a win, right, Mamas?) and come in every shape and cartoon character you can think of. Be warned — some come with electronic tunes that play non-stop!

Read More: 101 Things To Do In Hong Kong With Kids

The Mooncake Festival In Hong Kong

You either love ’em or leave ’em, but the entire Mid-Autumn Festival revolves around having a sliver (or more) of this seasonal treat. Celebrated as a thanksgiving for the harvest, the main symbol of this season is the full moon represented in a mooncake.

It is said that in the Yuan dynasty, mooncakes were used as a means to pass secret messages between revolutionaries. Well, many centuries later, the mooncake has evolved into an assortment of different tastes. Typically shared between the entire family after a special dinner gathering, the cakes are traditionally filled with a smooth but dense lotus seed paste encasing an entire egg yolk at the centre.

An acquired taste for some, but once appreciated, you’ll be wondering what you ever did without them! Not to fret if you’re not a fan of the traditional mooncake, as there are many different variations to suit the changing palates of Hongkongers.

Read More: The Best Mooncakes In Hong Kong This Year

Family-Friendly Mid-Autumn Festival Activities In Hong Kong

Throughout Hong Kong, you’ll find lanterns strung about ready to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. Typically, Hong Kong is never one to shy away from celebrating local customs on a grand scale!

Fire Dragon Dance, Tai Hang

Tai Hang residents are always proud of the Fire Dragon Dance and if you’ve experienced it, you’ll know why! It’s definitely one to cross off your Hong Kong bucket list if you haven’t seen it so far. This fascinating Mid-Autumn Festival tradition dates back to the 19th century, when residents of Tai Hang (then a small Hakka village) were dealing with catastrophe after catastrophe. From a raging typhoon to an awful plague, followed by an alleged python eating their livestock, the Tai Hang villagers simply couldn’t get a break. To get out of this bout of bad luck, a soothsayer said they needed to perform a fire dance for three days and three nights during the Mid-Autumn Festival. So the villagers created a large dragon made out of straw and then covered it with incense to ward off evil spirits. Along with loud firecrackers and drummers, the villagers danced for three days and, truth be told, the plague ceased.

Today, this dance has been listed as a National Intangible Cultural Heritage and it is worth taking the kids to watch the performance. Every Mid-Autumn Festival, Tai Hang attracts large crowds who flock to the neighbourhood to catch this fiery and smoky spectacle. We’re talking about 300 performers, 7,000 incense sticks and a 67-metre-long dragon that will leave you in a wide-eyed trance!

When: Tuesday, 16 to Thursday, 18 September 2024
Where:Tai Hang, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong Island (Best vantage point: Wun Sha Street, information map to be released later)
How much: Free Viewing

Read More: Your Family Neighbourhood Guide To Tai Hang

Mid-Autumn Lantern Carnivals In Victoria Park & Tsing Yi

The Mid-Autumn Festival this year promises to have spectacular lantern displays of different themes at the Mid-Autumn Lantern Carnivals 2024, along with stage performances by arts groups from the Mainland and traditional lantern displays, fire dragon dance and folk craft demonstrations from Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau. Details are yet to be announced but we know the dates of Mid-Autumn Lantern carnivals this year. Besides the brightly lit lanterns, there are usually game and food stalls, palm reading and other kid-friendly activities. Don’t forget your cameras and better yet, buy your kids their own Mid-Autumn lanterns at the stalls (which come in all shapes and sizes including their favourite Disney character!) to add to the fun.

The largest and most popular carnival is found in Victoria Park in Causeway Bay but there is a popular one in the New Territories as well.

Urban Mid-Autumn Lantern Carnival

When: Thursday, 12 to Wednesday, 18 September 2024
Where: Victoria Park, Causeway Bay

New Territories Mid-Autumn Lantern Carnival

When: Thursday, 12 to Wednesday, 18 September 2024
Where: Tsing Yi Park, New Territories

Read More: Mid-Autumn Crafts And Activities To Do With Your Kids

Mid-Autumn Festival Lantern Displays

Be prepared for a thematic display of lanterns that will make your September a magical one with the littlest members of your family. Trust us, your kids won’t be the only ones ooh-ing and ahh-ing! Keep your eye out as you pass through the city’s shopping malls (our pick is Lee Tung Avenue in Wan Chai) for traditional and colourful Chinese lanterns.

This year, the Hong Kong Cultural Centre will have a spectacular month-long lantern display as well, and the Piazza is expected to host plenty of cultural events that will be worth watching.

Mid-Autumn Lantern Display

When: Friday, 6 September to 6 October 2024
Where: Piazza, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Tsim Sha Tsui

Other Ways To Celebrate The Mid-Autumn Festival In Hong Kong

While we wait for further announcements on the Mid-Autumn festivities this year, we’ve put together some easy crafts so you can celebrate by making your own lanterns, drums, dragons and even mooncakes. And here’s also a list of alternate (but equally lively and fun) ways to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival:

• Head to one of the many family-friendly beaches in Hong Kong ready with your lanterns (and possibly BBQ equipment!). We spot families decorating tents by the beach every year and it’s a ton of fun!
• Take on a night hike and see the city all lit up from above (suitable for older kids and experienced families)
• Dine at a rooftop bar and catch the full moon
• Venture out to Tai O Fishing Village for a lantern extravaganza where the whole village comes to life
• Book your tables at your favourite Chinese restaurants for dim sum and poon choi!
• Grab your picnic basket and lights and head to an outdoor park — get there slightly early to get a good spot because there will be lots of families! You could even do some baking and cooking with the kids before you head out!
• Let the kids watch Over The Moon on Netflix. It explains the story of Chang’e while delicately touching on themes of love, loss, family and friendship in a way that’s easy enough for the little ones to understand and appreciate.

Read More: Tai O Fishing Village – Family Restaurants, Hikes And More 

Editor’s Note: “Celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival In Hong Kong 2024 – Mooncakes, Lanterns And More” was most recently updated in August 2024 by Sassy Mama. Thanks to Danielle Roberts for her contribution.