Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!
Today is Mid-Autumn Festival in China. It is one of four key festivals for Chinese. It has been celebrated for 2,000 years and falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. It is a celebration of the fall harvest and is marked by stunning full moons and the tradition of gifting and eating “moon cakes”, which are sort of the Chinese equivalent to a fruit cake. But instead of dried fruit, they often have an egg yolk in their center!
Where is it celebrated?
Major celebrations take place in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines. Many in the East Asian diaspora also observe the holiday, with families in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere gathering to mark the autumn thanksgiving festival.
In Vietnam, where the holiday is known as Trung Thu, children play games, don masks and march in nighttime lantern parades. Unfortunately, several reports of fires and injuries are reported every year during the festival mainly from sky lanterns.
For the fireworks world, Mid-Autumn Festival marks the earnest start of the USA production season. The factories are just now opening after a long summer shut-down. The challenge is that European orders must finish by October in order to arrive in time for their Jan 1 selling date. Also, China domestic production is beginning as well for February sales. So USA orders are competing with European and Chinese production. I will begin sending out the weekly status updates on production soon. We will introduce a new stock order form that updates with live quantities. Look for the new form soon.
Dominator just returned from the NFA where we had a successful expo. Thank you to everyone that stopped by the booth or enjoyed a meal with us. It was great seeing all of you again.
All the best,
Matt Palaszynski