Ask Mr. Know-It-All: What else goes on during the Mid-Autumn Festival?

Ah, the Mid-Autumn Festival. That special time of lunar appreciation, calorific overload… and pyromania. 

 

Traditionally, having finished one’s mooncakes, the empty mooncake tin is put to a second use. In the upturned lids and tins, kids engage in the age-old tradition of bo lap (煲蠟), which means “boiling candles,” and is known in English as “wax burning.” 

 

Thankfully, this isn’t the kind of wax play that crops up in unfortunate Google Image searches. Instead, kids fool around with the characteristic red candles that are so ubiquitous this time of year, building towers of wax as they watch the flames dance alongside each other, lit by the white light of the moon. Take it from Mr. Know-It-All: there’s nothing more fun than fooling around with wax.

 

But of course, there’s a darker side to playing with fire. A second approach to wax burning doesn’t end with a sculpture or two. Instead, the candle wax is heated alongside scraps of paper in the mooncake tin until it’s a bubbling, boiling mass with a flame creeping along the top. At this point, you throw a cup of water into the tin. As it’s denser than wax, the water sinks to the bottom of the mooncake tin. The wax is well over 100°C, and so the water vaporizes as it hits the bottom, expanding from a liquid to a gas. It explodes outward, throwing tiny droplets of wax into the air—hot wax which turns into a giant fireball.

 

This is a very stupid thing to do, obviously. In years past it’s contributed to 1) lots of wax everywhere the morning after the Mid-Autumn Festival and 2) plenty of visits to the hospital burns unit on the night-of. 

 

In recent years, education campaigns and more police patrols have cut down on the incidents. Oh—and it’s now illegal. Under Section 23A of the Pleasure Grounds Regulation 2000, it is an offence to “sprinkle or pour any liquid onto any hot wax, in such a manner as to cause or as to be likely to cause a risk of injury to any person or damage to any property.” Offenders face a maximum penalty of a $2,000 fine and 14 days in jail. Pyromaniacs, you have been warned. Maybe stick to the candle-gazing, and catch a video on YouTube instead.