Celebrations across China begin for Mid-Autumn Festival

People across China are celebrating in diverse ways the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival which falls on September 17 this year.

A well-preserved traditional custom, "burning a brick tower," also a national intangible cultural heritage, has been staged in Ji'an City, east China's Jiangxi Province.

Every year, people from Jiaxi Village build a tower with bricks and tiles, and fill it with straws, firewood and tree leaves. They light the fire at the bottom of the tower, and the flames pour out of the tower immediately, lighting up the sky.

Locals usually admire the moon and eat mooncakes while enjoying the fire to celebrate the festival.

"Every year, I go back to my hometown here to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival in the traditional way, which brings me a great sense of happiness," said Zhan Danwen, a local villager. For hundreds of years, picking fruits and vegetables has been one of the activities for Tujia ethnic people to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, with a good blessing of harvest for the year.

This year in Jianshi County, Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, central China's Hubei Province, tourists joined the celebration of locals by picking eggplants, chili peppers and corns in the garden, with torches lighting the night sky.

Located in Xinzhou city in north China's Shanxi Province, the Mount Wutai Scenic Spot saw soaring numbers of tourists from Aug 22 to Sept 7, an increase of 22 percent year on year.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is a significant traditional Chinese festival celebrated on the night when the moon reaches its fullest and brightest on the 15th day of the eighth month on the Chinese lunar calendar.

During the festival, family members would come together, share mooncakes while admiring the moon, and light up lanterns to enjoy the happiness of family reunion.

Celebrations across China begin for Mid-Autumn Festival

Multiple handheld pager explosions struck Beirut and the southeastern and northeastern regions of Lebanon on Tuesday, leading to a temporary internet shutdown in the southern suburbs of the capital city, according to China Media Group (CMG) reporter Ci Xiaoning.

"I am currently at the entrance of a major hospital in Beirut, Lebanon's capital. Around 15:30 today, there were several explosions in the southern suburbs of Beirut. My Lebanese colleague, who lives very close to the area, experienced an immediate loss of internet connectivity. Reports have since confirmed that many handheld pagers were involved in the explosions," Ci reported outside a hospital in Beruit.

Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad confirmed that the explosions resulted in at least nine deaths and about 2,800 injuries, with approximately 200 people in critical condition. The injured are being transferred to hospitals.

In a statement, Hezbollah said it is conducting security and scientific investigations to identify the reasons behind these explosions, adding that the group is "at the highest level of readiness to defend Lebanon and its people."

In a separate statement, the Shiite group blamed Israel for "this criminal attack," vowing to retaliate.

The Lebanese Council of Ministers stressed that the government, shortly after the deadly explosions, began contacting the concerned countries and the United Nations to hold the perpetrators accountable.

Israel has yet to comment on Tuesday's blasts. According to media reports, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant held a security assessment meeting at the HaKirya military base in Tel Aviv on Tuesday to address the implications of the explosions.

CMG reporter says internet shutdown following deadly pager blasts in Lebanon