Because one Valentine's Day is just not enough...

Hong Kong, or rather, many Asian cultures in general, celebrate a few of them year-round as odes to their loved ones (or potential ones, for the single people out there). One of the colorful sequels in February to the first, Westernized iteration of Valentine's Day is the Lantern Festival.

The Lantern Festival, or "Yuen Siu", is characterized by children creating paper lanterns (I tend to think a la James and the Giant Peach, but that's probably culturally insensitive...) and going out into the night while lovers use the extra light of the night to stroll through parks, spend time with each other, and all sorts of other mushy-gushy romance stuff. But it's all good. Since the celebrations have evolved over time, more institutionalized and government-crafted displays have been set up for couples to meander through. So we as a group of displaced lovers in one way or another decided to go view them as a rowdy group of desensitized Americans about it.

Maybe not the best or most respectful introduction. And sure, sensationalized. But given the fact that we had just seen bouquets and elegant chocolate pieces and lines out the door for nice restaurants just one day prior, we were a little sick of the Asian brand of romance.

And, since we hadn't traveled quite that far out into the wilderness of the West part of the New Territories, we took the MTR about as far West as you can go: Tuen Mun. We're talking about an hour and a half of train rides and transfers.

Now, Tuen Mun is simply another residential town, meaning that most of the spectacles and tourism-setup displays that occur in Central and Tsim Sha Tsui would not be the case... Rather. Think about your hometown, as in, the actual place where you lived, not the urban area to where your hometown orbited. You know how every so often a small, charming little block party or festival was created for whatever purpose in the town square, and everyone in town went to it, not because it was actually cool but because it's just tradition to go and have a mediocre time with all of the same people year after year? And how it's so rare to see municipal money actually going to use, but in an amateur-yet-still-appreciative manner?

Well, this was exactly what the Tuen Mun Lantern Festival celebration was. Held in a gorgeous park somewhere in town, the park was (somewhat) aglow by satisfactory-to-not-half-bad created activities and lanterns to look at, all accompanied by the pandering of a gentle Chinese pop cover band.

This won't exactly be something that sticks out in my memory, nor will it fulfill much past a personal checkoff of another stop on my quest to visit each MTR stop, but it was a pleasant evening, all things assured. Didn't quite have the genuineness of, say, a more beat-up part of town because of the obviously artificial and somewhat uninspired attempts at entertainment, but it was yet another cross-section of Hong Kong life that few get to actually witness.

In some ways, that's refreshing. Even urbanites in 400 sq ft apartments in Hong Kong go to crappy town festivals when there's nothing better to do on a holiday weeknight.

Warning: somewhat sardonic language appears ahead.

 Lantern... Drums. Or something. They were the first things resembling lanterns we actually saw. Thus, it warranted a picture.

 Faces. And caricatures. And, well, way too concentrated of light sources for my cell phone camera to actually do justice to... Eh. It's pretty darn close to the justice I thought it merited. They're lights. It's fun.

 Luchador?

 Here was the most impressive part of the display: a large fountain in the actually gorgeous, well-foliaged park, with a large stock of animals and characters in various poses in the water. It was also the densest gathering of people in the place. Notice the flamingos in the bottom left... They were the best. Unfortunately, I have no zoom.

 "Hey everyone, Jeff was in China! See? Red lanterns! Nothing's more authentic!"

 The spotlights were a bit annoying, as if the focus of the evening lay on the Cantopop cover band and not the menagerie of illuminated animals walking on water.

 Attempt at artful eye movement, part 1. Would be more effective if the eye actually had anywhere to go.

 Attempt at art, part 2. Better.

 Front view of the animal/everything else scene.

 Inflatable kids and inflatable gold. What's more deserving of a picture than that?

("Well, I could think of any number of things in Hong Kong on a holiday that deserve more attention...")

Yeah, well. You, imaginary snarky audience member, are still reading down to this point. Joke's on you.

The living spaces of Tuen Mun. Definitely an older, more established part of town. Lots of families. And the distance from the seedier areas in the main veins of the city were far removed. About as much of a suburb as my area, Sha Tin.

And that's that.