China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) is celebrating the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival with a grand lantern show at Victoria Park.
The show, featuring an illuminated collection of giant sculptural lanterns blending traditional Chinese culture and modern designs and technologies, began on Sept 30 and will last through Tuesday. The Mid-Autumn Festival fell on Monday this year.
One of the highlights is a giant lantern named "A Feast of Fire and Flowers," which stands about 12 meters high and resembles an ornate crown, symbolizing the unity and integration of the Hong Kong and Macao SARs and their neighouring Guangdong Province.
The "Gold Shines, Energy Explodes" lantern features the mascots of the upcoming 15th National Games, the 12th National Games for Persons with Disabilities and the 9th National Special Olympic Games, cheering for athletes.
"I feel very happy to enjoy the lantern show with my family, which is also an evidence that every citizen in Hong Kong is very happy. For us young people, such is a scene we need to strive to maintain, as young people should contribute a lot of our strength to do more for Hong Kong and our country," said Su Haiwen, a local visitor.
"The lanterns for the Mid-Autumn Festival this year are spectacular. They fuse the spirit of the National Games and festival greetings in a very clearcut way. I wish all my Chinese compatriots a happy Mid-Autumn Festival. I wish everyone health and happiness," said Mr. Ho, another visitor.
Other performances and shows of folk singing and dancing are also delighting visitors at the Victoria Park.
"Happy Mid-Autumn Festival to all Chinese friends around the world! I'm here at the Victoria Park in Hong Kong today, with warm lanterns around and the bright full moon above. This happiness of reunion belongs to my small family and to all people of the motherland as a big family. May this moonlight illuminate the way home for those overseas and warm the hearts of all hard-working people. I wish peace and prosperity for my small family and the big family of my motherland," said Su Yong-an, advisor, Hong Kong Association for Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China.
Hong Kong holds Mid-Autumn Festival lantern show
Hong Kong holds Mid-Autumn Festival lantern show
Eighteen sets of precious archival materials related to David Nelson Sutton, a U.S. assistant prosecutor at the Tokyo Trials and one of the earliest international prosecutors to investigate the Nanjing Massacre, were officially donated on Wednesday to the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.
Sunday marks the 80th anniversary of the opening of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE, also known as the Tokyo Trials). To commemorate the milestone, six diaries written by Sutton between 1946 and 1948, when he was conducting investigations for the tribunal, were donated together with a series of reports titled Reports from China.
"It is necessary to let more Chinese, even people all over the world, to see these archival materials. Let all the world know why the Tokyo Trials 80 years ago were described as a trial of justice, and how the Nanjing Massacre nearly 90 years ago was unprecedentedly brutal and tragic beyond compare," said Zou Dehuai, the donor.
From May 3, 1946 to Nov 12, 1948, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East was held in Tokyo by 11 countries, including the United States, China, Britain and the Soviet Union, to try Japan's Class-A war criminals after World War II.
"Why do we say the Tokyo Trials were a trial of justice? It was a trial witnessed by the world, with judges from 11 countries. Major war criminals, such as Iwane Matsui, a crime culprit for the Nanjing Massacre, and Hideki Tojo, all ultimately received the punishment they deserved. That is why the Tokyo Trials are called a trial of justice. These archives are of immense importance," Zou said.
Sutton came to China with the International Prosecution Section in 1946 and was tasked with investigating Japanese war crimes in China, with a particular focus on collecting evidence related to the Nanjing Massacre.
The six diaries recorded many details of Sutton's work during the Tokyo Trials. In one entry, dated March 9, he wrote that he had received formal orders to go to Shanghai, Nanking (Nanjing), Peiping (Beijing) and other sites in the China theater to investigate war crimes and gather evidence. Another entry recorded his arrival in Nanjing at 11:20 on April 2. On May 3, the day the trial opened, he described the defendants as looking like "insignificant beaten men."
The donated materials also include Sutton's "Reports from China," which further exposed Japanese wartime atrocities in China, including mass killings, violence against civilians, germ warfare and the coercion of Chinese people into opium cultivation.
Zou is a collector born in the 1990s who has long searched for wartime historical evidence. He first found the Sutton materials in November 2025 on a U.S.-based auction website specialized in military artifacts. After confirming Sutton's identity and reviewing preview images that indicated the items were original archival materials, Zou placed a bid for the collection and later, ultimately paying a price nearly 100,000 U.S. dollars, far more than his original budget. And he arranged for its return to China, with assistance from others.
At the donation ceremony, Zou received a donation certificate. He said the Sutton archives were the most expensive items he had acquired in a decade of collecting. "These archives, these ironclad evidences, expose the crimes committed by the invading Japanese army in China and serve as a warning to all humanity. When you look at these documents, you cannot imagine that a human army could commit such massive and horrible atrocities. I believe that any Japanese person with conscience, after reading the Sutton archives, would firmly recognize what kind of a massacre took place in Nanjing. For the young people of future China, Japan and the United States, we must tell them the truth of history, and why we must cherish the hard-won peace, and how heavy the cost of peace truly was," Zou said.
Tokyo Trials prosecutor's diaries donated to Nanjing Massacre memorial hall
