Moon Festival

Tomorrow is the Mid-Autumn Festival in China, also known as the Moon or Mooncake Festival. Trying to pin down the origins of this holiday has proved difficult. There are many legends, including one about the day when ten suns appeared in the sky and a skilled archer was hired to shoot down the nine extras. He was rewarded with an elixir that would bring him eternal life, but his wife stole the elixir and was banished to the moon. Or, in some versions, she is a good wife and swallows the elixir just as she is about to be killed by her husband's enemy and is so immortalized in the moon. There's also one about a bunny who jumps into a boiling pot, sacrificing himself to feed some starving monks, who reward his heroism by inviting him back to the Moon Palace to live forever as the Jade Bunny.

Anyway, strange roots aside, the Mid-Autumn Festival is today a time to celebrate the harvest. Traditional foods include round fruits like grapefruits, melons, and pomegranates. Of course, the Moon Cake is also served. These are a huge deal here, sold everywhere from Starbucks and Walmart to street vendors. They are very expensive and wrapped extravagantly. In fact, China is trying to cut down on the wasted packaging of Moon Cakes, marketing some in simple recyclable packages as "green Moon Cakes." I received some of the ridiculously packaged Moon Cakes as a gift from the dean of my department. They were in two huge boxes in a huge bag. Each box held five Moon Cakes nestled in a satin liner. Each Moon Cake lies in a small dish, wrapped in plastic, and wrapped by yet another box. A knife and chopsticks are included in each box. I guess harvest time is a time of gluttony. The cakes can best be compared to western-style fruitcakes. They are dense and oily and filled with red bean and other unidentifiable pastes.

The reason I am telling you about the Moon Cake Festival is that its most important function today is to reunite families and friends. The roundness of the moon symbolizes the wholeness of families (among other things including fertility, which is why September/October is the most popular time to get married in China). Most Chinese try to be with their families for this holiday, but if they can't, they gaze at the full moon--the brightest of the year--and think about their loved ones. Which, if it's actually clear tomorrow night, is what we'll be doing. There are lots of nighttime activities and celebrations. We'll take a walk and hopefully it won't be raining (there's a lovely Chinese saying: "The Moon in the home sky always shines brightest," which I imagine, given the air quality in Shanghai, will be true for both me and Peter, having looked at the forecasts for Spokane and Boise). We'll spend several minutes unwrapping a Moon Cake, cut it into diagonal squares and sink our teeth into its pasty, oily density and think of the brightness and excess of our American home.

I leave you with what is printed on each and every one of our Moon Cakes:

Tasting the Delicious Food

Just Like Tasting the Wonderful

Life of Yours