Yesterday, it’s Mid Autumn Festival. Same celebration for this festival, children like to play lanterns and we ate Chinese Moon cakes/ snowy moon cakes during this period.A little bit different is this year is 60 anniversary of China. There were tons of celebration during this period. People who living in mainland China have 8 days public holidays but we HONG KONG people only had 1 day holiday on 1.10.2009.
Beside the celebration of the festival and anniversary, i did not forget about the news around the world. The typhoon in Philipines and the earthquake in Indonesia. Tons of people are still suffering from these nature disaster. Now, there is another typhoon will go to Philippines again..and Taiwan too! I can perceive that the weather is become really unusual.
We cannot ignore the power of nature. Human keep polluting the earth, the revenge of nature has been already starting…
Tomorrow is Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節, zhōng qiū jié), it also known as the Moon Festival. It is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar (the other one is Chinese Lunar New Year) and it is a popular Festival in Asia. This year, the festival is fall on Sunday (14th Sept), so we will have an extra hoilday on Monday!!!
The origin of this festival can date back over 3,000 years to moon worship in China’s Shang Dynasty, that spread to neighbouring cultures like Japan. The name of Mid-Autumn Festival was first called in the Zhou Dynasty. It is held on the 15 day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar, (usually around mid- or late- September in the Gregorian Calendar).
In the past, famers celebrated the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Besides, Chinese family memebers and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat mooncakes and pomeloes together as a tradition.
Furthermore, there are additional cultural/ regional customs, for example:
1) Eating mooncakes and fruits outside under the moon
4) Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang’e
5) Planting Mid-Autumn trees
6) Fire Dragon Dances
About the traditional food of this festival, Mooncake cannot be missed… There are tons of different tastes of mooncakes sale around in here…
Typical mooncakes are round or rectangular pastries, measuring about 10 cm in diameter and 4-5 cm thick. A thick filling usually made from lotus seed paste is surrounded by a relatively thin (2-3 mm) crust and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs. Mooncakes are rich, heavy, and dense compared with most Western cakes and pastries. They are usually eaten in small wedges accompanied by Chinese tea.
Mooncake filling made of with lotus seed paste and egg yolk
The Snow Moon Cake become popular these years in Hong Kong, there are many different tastes: like orange, mango, durian, chocolate, Cuppacino….etc..Why it called snow moon cake? It is because the skin of this moon cake is white in color and it keeps cool in the fridge, when you taste it, like eating ice-cream lol~~ Besides, there are different kinds of color because of the tastes, like greentea taste with green color skin, mango taste might be with yellow skin color lol..like the picture below..it’s sesame taste with green bean paste inside.
There are different versions of tales about this festival. I just told the two most common one in here:
Chang’e flies to the moon, from Myths and Legends of China
Version one:
Houyi was a lazy boy who did nothing but to practice his archery. He practiced day and night until he became the greatest archer in the world. One day, the ten suns all assembled around the earth. Their presence destroyed all vegetation, and hundreds of thousands were perishing. The emperor, who was desperate, offered his crown to anyone who could shoot down the suns. Houyi answered his call. He shot down nine of the suns, and as he pulled his bow to shoot the last one, the emperor stopped him. Saying the earth must have one sun. Houyi then became the emperor. He was pampered to the extent that he wanted to be emperor forever. He called his advisors to look for a way to make him immortal. His advisors found a way. They found a recipe for the Pill of Immortality. It required 100 adolescent boys to be ground into a biscuit like a pill. Every night he was supposed to grind one boy. On the hundredth night, his wife Chang’e (Chinese: 嫦娥; pinyin) could not bear to watch her husband become the tyrannical dictator for eternity. She prayed to Xi Wang Mu for help. She stole the pill, with Houyi shooting arrows at her, and flew to the moon grabbing a rabbit to keep her company.So the Chinese say that if you look up at the moon to this day you can sometimes see a rabbit making moon cakes.
Moon Rabbit
Version two:
Chang’e was a goddess. She fell in love with a farmer, Houyi, and he fell in love with her, not knowing she was from the heavens up above. Soon he had found out and the gods from heaven were furious of them because it was forbidden for a god or goddess to fall in love with a human. They had a child together but she still had to leave both her beloved husband and child behind during mid-autumn. She would represent the moon, he would represent as the sun and the child would represent as the stars. Taken pity over them, they are only allowed to see each other every mid-autumn.
There is a music can be represented this festival. I have introduced this singer in the former post:
但願人長久 Wishing we last forever- by 鄧麗君 Teresa Teng
Actually, this song lyrics was from a famous poem Shui diao ge tou (traditional Chinese: 水調歌頭; simplified Chinese: 水调歌头) which made by a Song Dynasty poet Su Shi, commonly known as Su Dongpo.
明月幾時有？
把酒問青天。
不知天上宮闕，
今夕是何年？
我欲乘風歸去，
唯恐瓊樓玉宇，
高處不勝寒。
起舞弄清影，
何似在人間！
轉朱閣，
低綺戶，
照無眠。
不應有恨，
何事長向別時圓？
人有悲歡離合，
月有陰晴圓缺，
此事古難全。
但願人長久，
千里共嬋娟。
English translation:
Bright moon, when did you appear?
Lifting my wine, I question the dark night sky.
Tonight in the palaces and halls of heaven
what year is it, I wonder?
I would like to ride the wind, make my home there,
Only I hide in a jade room of a beautiful mansion,
As I could not bear the cold of high altitudes.
So I rise and dance and play in your pure beams,
this human world — how can it compare with yours?
Circling red chambers,
low in the curtained door,
you shine on the sleepless.
Surely you bear us no ill will —
why then must you be so round at times when we humans are parted!
People have their grieves and joys, their togetherness and separation,
The moon has its dark and clear times, its waxings and wanings.
Situations are never ideal since long ago.
I only hope we two may have long long lives,
So that we may share the moon’s beauty even though we are a thousand miles apart.
