Tet Trung Thu - Mid Autumn Festival
Several types of special cakes called banh trung thu are eaten at the festival time and are sold over places which are traditional and very rich in taste. The cakes are filled with lotus seeds, meat, green peas …and have an egg yolk in the center to represent the moon. The unicorn dance is an important aspect of this festival: there is the Lord Earth, called Ong Dia in Vietnamese, is the dancer who dances around the dragon, urging it on. Ong Dia has a very round, happy smiling moon face. He represents the wealth and fullness of the earth.
The meaning of Mid-Autumn Festival
The Story related to Tet Trung Thu
A favorite folklore is about a carp that wanted to become a dragon. The carp worked and worked and eventually transformed itself into a dragon. This story behind the mythical symbol, Ca hoa rong, parents use this story to encourage their children to work hard so that they can become whatever they want to be.
There’s also a story about how the Moon Lady ascended to the moon. A man named Chu Cuoi found a lucky tree that had special healing powers. Because this tree was sacred, people were forbidden to urinate at the foot of this tree. Unfortunately, Chu Cuoi’s wife, chi Hang forgot the rule and urinated on the tree. On day, while she sitting on the tree’s branch, the tree started to grow and grow. Eventually, it reached the moon. Since the, chi Hang lived on the moon for the rest of her life as a punishment for desecrating at sacred tree.
Nowaday, Mid-Autumn Festival is for Children or Adult?
According to market survey’s result, in recent Mid Autumn Festival season, manufacturers was not pay their attentions on retails markets, the colorful Moon cake kiosks at the stress corners is just for trademark advertising purpose ( don’t care about turnover). The target what they are looking for is foreign companies (especially
Mid-Autumn Festival now also have degreased its ancient feature because of industrialization and modernization, in the past lanterns are made bamboo( the frame), the center is made of a multi-colored plastic material. A candle holder is located in the center so that children can put a candle inside the lantern and light it in the dark night. It’s so glistery... But now, more than 80% lanterns which were sold on the market are made by plastic with light bulb inside, imported from
Glow: anh sang ruc ro, su phat sang
Prestigious: co uy tin
Donor: nguoi tang, nguoi bieu
Glistery: long lanh, long lay
1/ What do you think about Mid-Autumn Festival nowadays? How many percentage for children and how many percentage for adult?
2/ What will you do in this Mid-Autumn Festival? Have you ever think that you will give a high-cost Moon cake box to your boss or someone with intention is hidden inside?
3/ If you were president of big company, you received Anco King Moon cake from your partner who want to become one of material supplier for your company , what do you think and what will you do?
4/ What do you think about the poor children in Mid-Autumn Festival? Do you have some suggestion to give the smile and happiness for them on this Children festival?
English Learning:
"Interjection" is a big name for a little word. Interjections are short exclamations like Oh!, Um or Ah! They have no real grammatical value but we use them quite often, usually more in speaking than in writing. When interjections are inserted into a sentence, they have no grammatical connection to the sentence. An interjection is sometimes followed by an exclamation mark (!) when written.
Here are some interjections with examples:
interjection | meaning | example |
ah | expressing pleasure | "Ah, that feels good." |
expressing realization | "Ah, now I understand." | |
expressing resignation | "Ah well, it can't be heped." | |
expressing surprise | "Ah! I've won!" | |
alas | expressing grief or pity | "Alas, she's dead now." |
dear | expressing pity | "Oh dear! Does it hurt?" |
expressing surprise | "Dear me! That's a surprise!" | |
eh | asking for repetition | "It's hot today." "Eh?" "I said it's hot today." |
expressing enquiry | "What do you think of that, eh?" | |
expressing surprise | "Eh! Really?" | |
inviting agreement | "Let's go, eh?" | |
er | expressing hesitation | " |
Books supply us a lot of useful information, sometimes precious lessons from this wonderful but complicated life. We can know many things in many fields such as science, politic, society, travel, religion.Books also are the most faithful of friends. In fact, our friends may change or die but our books are always patiently waiting to talk to us. They never cross, peevish or unwill to converse as our friends sometimes are.
In the past time, books were precious things which were used to value the education in each family, decorate the houses because the price of one book was very high that there were many poor people who could not afford even the price of a cheap edition.
Nowadays, there are many kinds of books and the price is not expensive at all.
Some books we read simply for pleasure, and amusement for example goods novels, novelettes, funny stories, picture stories.Then we are tired or the brain is weary with exhausted study, workings, it is the time for healthy recreation to lose ourselves in some absorbing stories written by a master hand.
And as we need plain, wholesome food for the body, we often read serious books for the mind. We can choose according to our taste such as: history, biography, philosophy, religion, travel, science, psychology.These kinds of books will give us not only pleasance but also an education.
Another kind is books of inspiration. The best poetry can give us noble thoughts and beautiful imaginings about every thing in this life.
Each person can own a private library which includes any books he likes. But the importance here is that he reads them or not. The reading habit should be built up when we were still young, especially children, because this good habit will help us much to get a widen knowledge and great success gradually in many fields.
1) Have you got a private bookshelf in your house? 
2) What kind of books do you have?
3) Which kind of books do you like best?
4) How can you find a good book when you are in a books store?
5) Do you have reading habits at free time or before sleeping?
6) How can you build up the reading and collecting books habit for your children?
7) What do you think about the quality of books nowadays?
Who would have ever imagined that an unemployed single mother, dependent on government handouts, would author a series of groundbreaking children books?
This is the success story of Joanne "Jo" Rowling, popularly known as J K Rowling, the indisputable heroine of the Harry Porter series.
The series have not only gained a worldwide cult-like following, but have also won multiple awards and sold over 350 million copies.
Rowling's fortune is touted to be over $1 billion (Sh68 billion). And the venture has earned her honour in the literary world.
Her writing has put her on the roll of
So, if writing is this lucrative, why are gifted Africans not borrowing a leaf from Rowland to pen their way to glory and wealth?
There are several explanations to this. Photocopying of both new and old literature denies African writers an opportunity to attain Rowland's popularity, success and wealth.
In
Bookshops are the least visited places and many people prefer to patronise social joints during their free time.
European novel shows an element of timeless in stories that candidly demonstrate how moral corruption, murder and deceit affect the society. And this appears to be the main key in their propulsion to fame and wealth of these authors. But advanced prior media hype plays major role.
Prof Ngugi wa Thiong'o remains one of
Other great novels that followed were The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross.
Meja Mwangi is a among few local novelists who have captured the hearts and imaginations of Kenyans with classics like Kill Me Quick, Going Down River Road, The Cockroach Dance and The Last Plague.
On the other hand, Grace Ogot has gained prominence as a pioneer female short story and novel writer.
In fact, she was the first female fiction writer to be published by the East African Publishing House.
Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye is another respected, prolific woman writer, not only in
Her historical novel, Coming to Birth, which she wrote in 1986 won the Sinclair Prize for Fiction, while Homing In (1994), won second place in the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature in 1995.
What lessons do we learn from J K Rowling?
First, an aspiring creative writer should never be idle. Rowling was waiting to connect a train when the idea of Harry Porter struck her mind.
Budding writers should never accept rejection.
In publishing, perseverance is the key. Though a record 12 publishers rejected Rowling's manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, she did not let her ambitions crumble.
A talented writer with poor economical background should never let the penury state hinder his/her ambitions. Media hype and power of suspense help in creating an advance desire on readers. It creates theories, fuels speculations and positions the book on an exhilarating level, turning it into a must-read.
And finally, a writer should build a strong brand and capitalise on it. When the first Harry Potter book proved a hit, Rowling never deviated to another genre of writing or different title.
A COW GRAZING
Artist : “That, sir, is a cow grazing”
Visitor : “Where is the grass?”
Artist : “The cow has eaten up”
Visitor : “But where is the cow?”
Artist : “You don’t suppose she’d be fool enough to stay there after she’d eaten up all the grass, do u?”
Next topic (15 Sep 07): Mid-autumn Festival (Composer: Ms.Tran)
