新加坡牛车水中秋换新装：24年来首次停挂大型街道灯饰，居民手写祝福的社区灯笼成主角
新加坡——今年中秋，新加坡牛车水（Chinatown）最显眼的变化是“少了点什么”：余东旋街与新桥路一带24年来年年悬挂的大型街道灯饰，今年首次不再出现。牛车水中秋节庆委员会决定把2026年的庆祝从大马路搬回社区，改以居民亲手写上祝福的灯笼为主角，活动于9月11日至10月4日在牛车牙广场（Kreta Ayer Square）与万达街（Banda Street）一带举行，中秋正日为9月25日。
节庆委员会主席白成厚（Peh Cheng Hoo）在委员会的新闻稿中解释了这次转变：24年前牛车水开始办中秋灯饰时，大型街灯在新加坡还很稀罕；如今滨海湾花园、裕廊湖花园等地都有同类装置，是时候改变做法、把重心放回本地社区。他同时确认，农历新年的街道灯饰会保留，取消大型灯饰的只是今年的中秋。据安排，9月11日至10月4日期间，公众可在牛车水民众俱乐部（Kreta Ayer Community Club）的摊位和基层活动上，在灯笼上写下祝愿，这些灯笼随后被陆续加入牛车牙广场与万达街的社区展示。
节庆的重头戏是9月19日晚6时在牛车牙广场举行的“点亮灯笼，分享祝福”主庆典，内容包括社区提灯游行、品月饼与茶，以及用新加坡四种官方语言出题的灯谜；同一天，牛车水民众俱乐部还举办灯笼设计比赛。史密斯街当天下午2时至5时另设文化活动，包括舞狮与武术表演、传统灯笼制作分享、尤克里里演奏与社区合唱、民俗游戏，以及剪纸、书法、手工艺和染扇等体验；7至12岁儿童可参加灯笼绘画比赛。此外，River Place、Havelock View 与振瑞—丰林（Chin Swee-Hong Lim）等邻里还各设分场活动，整个节庆免费参加。
牛车水是新加坡华人历史最悠久的聚居区，中秋灯会24年来一直是本地华人社区的年度盛事。今年从“看灯”转向“做灯、写灯、提灯”，主办方希望让居民与访客从旁观者变成参与者。对专程为巨型街道灯饰而来的访客，主办方也提醒，滨海湾花园与裕廊湖花园同期仍有大型灯展，牛车水今年走的则是小尺度、近邻里的社区路线。
来源：据牛车水中秋节庆委员会新闻稿（经 chinatownsg.com 2026年9月发布）及本地节庆指南 mustvisit.sg、everydaypeople.sg 的活动资料整理。
Singapore's Chinatown Reinvents Mid-Autumn: Giant Street Lanterns Dropped After 24 Years as Handwritten Community Lanterns Take Centre Stage
SINGAPORE — The most noticeable thing about Mid-Autumn in Singapore's Chinatown this year was something missing: the large-format street lanterns that had hung over Eu Tong Sen Street and New Bridge Road for 24 years were not there. The Chinatown Festival Committee moved the 2026 celebration off the main roads and back into the neighbourhood, making lanterns handwritten with residents' own well-wishes the centrepiece of a community programme that ran from September 11 to October 4 around Kreta Ayer Square and Banda Street. The festival day itself fell on Friday, September 25.
In the committee's press release, its chairman, Peh Cheng Hoo, explained the change: when Chinatown's Mid-Autumn tradition began 24 years ago, large street lantern displays were rare in Singapore, but similar installations can now be found at Gardens by the Bay and Jurong Lake Gardens, so the committee decided it was time to focus on the local community instead. Chinese New Year will keep its street-lantern treatment; the change applies to Mid-Autumn, at least this year. From September 11 to October 4, residents and visitors could write personal well-wishes on lanterns at booths at Kreta Ayer Community Club and at grassroots events run by the Kreta Ayer-Kim Seng grassroots organisations, with the finished lanterns progressively added to community displays at Kreta Ayer Square and Banda Street.
The headline event, titled Light a Lantern, Share Your Blessing, was held at 6 p.m. on September 19 at Kreta Ayer Square, combining a community lantern procession with mooncake and tea appreciation and lantern riddles posed in Singapore's four official languages. A lantern design competition ran the same day at Kreta Ayer Community Club, and Smith Street hosted an afternoon of cultural activities from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., including lion dance and wushu performances, a talk on traditional lantern-making, ukulele music, community singing and heritage games, alongside paper cutting, calligraphy, handmade crafts and fan dyeing. A lantern painting competition was open to children aged seven to 12, and three smaller neighbourhood editions were held at River Place, Havelock View and Chin Swee-Hong Lim. Admission across the programme was free, with Chinatown MRT station (NE4/DT19) the nearest stop.
Chinatown — Kreta Ayer — is Singapore's historic Chinese quarter, and its Mid-Autumn celebration has been an annual fixture for the local Chinese community for 24 years. This year's edition deliberately traded spectacle for participation, inviting residents and visitors to make, write on and carry lanterns rather than simply photograph them. Visitors who came specifically for giant street lanterns were directed to the large displays running in the same period at Gardens by the Bay and at Lights by the Lake at Jurong Lake Gardens, while Chinatown's 2026 festival presented itself, in the committee's framing, as a neighbourhood celebration.
Source: Compiled from the Chinatown Festival Committee's press release as published by chinatownsg.com in September 2026, and event listings by mustvisit.sg and everydaypeople.sg.
图片来源：新加坡牛车水宝塔街街景（牛车水原貌馆一带），CC BY-SA 4.0（Wikimedia Commons，摄影：kallerna）
