Sasha's Flower Garden

There are many different legends connected with this festival -that it is the birthday of the moon; that the Old Man in the Moon (the matchmaker) ties together couples with invisible red thread; and that Miss Hang and Toad Circle journey back to their home on the moon, but it is a harvest celebration throughout Southeast Asia, and a time to admire the moon when it is at its fullest and brightest for the year. Tet (Lunar New Year) is an occasion for national merry-making: fireworks, traditional foods, visits to temples and pagodas, walks by the Lake of the Restored Sword on the Eve of Tet and visits to the Flower Market (Comb Street) near the crowded Dong-Xuan market. The Mid-Autumn Festival is a children’s celebration in which the adults also join. Festival of the Moon, Moon cake. ... read more

Having read so many tales about deities and animals on the moon, what about the origin of the mooncake? There are two tales on how this delicious sweet festive pastry is derived. The 1st one is based on the story of Chang Er. Yearning to meet her husband again, Chang Er instructed Hou Yi to, on the day of full moon, create a pill made of flour, as round as the moon. He was to place this flour pill at the west side of the house and call out her name. As promised, on the night of full moon, Chang Er flew down to reunite with him once every Mid-Autumn festival. The mooncake tradition then evolved from there. Zhu Yuan Zhang Mooncake Rebellion (朱元璋与月饼起义 : zhū yuán zhāng yǔ... read more

Plot Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) is a high school student from Preston, Idaho who lives with his grandmother, his elder brother Kip and their pet llama, Tina. Kip (Aaron Ruell), 32, is unemployed and boasts of spending hours in Internet chat rooms with ‘babes’ and training to be a cage fighter. Napoleon daydreams his way through school, doodling ligers and other fantastic rare creatures and being bullied. Napoleon is constantly bullied, even with his “kick-butt ninja skills.” Napoleon’s grandma breaks her coccyx in a quad bike accident and, believing her grandsons cannot be trusted to look after themselves, she asks Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) to stay with them while she recovers. Uncle Rico is a middle-aged former high-school quarterback who lives in an orange 1975 Dodge Santana campervan and is mentally stuck in the year 1982 (a fact which caused a breakup with his girlfriend). His presence, although increasingly irksome to ... read more