A Taste of a Different Tradition

Imagine yourself for a moment sitting outside on a mid-autumn evening. You’re surrounded by friends and family; eating round, thick, mostly bland and dense cakes about the size of your fist called Moon Cakes. As you laugh and tell stories of your day, you all stare up in admiration at the full moon. It’s the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival and if you can’t see the full moon or haven’t enjoyed a Moon Cake that day, it’s like having no food on Thanksgiving. Many will look at you with pity in their eyes. For the Chinese, the Mid-Autumn Festival (also known as the Moon Festival) is the second most important festival of the year.

To truly understand the emotional importance of an unfamiliar holiday is a difficult aspect of embracing a foreign culture. After all, that joy we get in the depths of our being with the approach of our favorite holiday is a feeling we most often learn from childhood. But how much fun would it be if we could share in the true delight of an unfamiliar holiday with friends in this foreign land. With this in mind, I set out to attempt to truly understand the meaning and joy behind celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival.

As with many holidays, tracing the exact origin can get tricky. After asking several of my Chinese friends and doing about a 15 minute search online, I figured I’d never get one solid story to share. But sources do agree that it started with the legend of Houyi and Chang’e, two figures in Chinese mythology. Variations of the story include one or both of them being well intentioned, loving and selfless OR conniving, self-serving and power hungry. I choose to reflect the more positive in my summary below.

The legend is that ten suns were threatening to burn up the Earth. Houyi, being a skilled archer, used his skills to shoot down all but one of the suns.

To reward him for saving the Earth, the Emperor gave him an elixir that would grant eternal life. However, Houyi was madly in love with his beautiful wife Cheng’e and did not want to take the elixir because it would instantly remove him from the world of the mortals and thus the world where Cheng’e existed.

One night, however, Peng, one of Houyi’s apprentice archers, broke into their home and sought to take the elixir. Only Cheng’e was home and, knowing she could not fight off Peng, took the elixir to keep it from falling into Peng’s evil hands. As soon as she took it, she was removed from the mortal world and sent to live on the moon, separating the blissfully happy couple.

From that day on, Cheng’e has lived on the moon with a Jade Rabbit whose shape you are said to be able to see in the moon. Houyi is only allowed to visit her one-day of the year, which, you may have guessed, is the Mid-Autumn Festival.

It is said that the moon shines brighter that night because the happy couple is reunited. In Chinese culture, the moon holds special significance and it’s full, round shape can be seen in art and architecture throughout the centuries and still today. It traditionally symbolizes unity.

Thus, on the all special Mid-Autumn Festival, when the moon is said to shine brighter than any other time, the Chinese gather together to view it, and gaze up, perhaps hoping to see Houyi and Cheng’e joyfully reuniting.

Having had a special affinity for full moons for many years, this is definitely a holiday I can appreciate for its tradition of spending time gazing at the full moon with friends.

The Mid-Autumn Festival takes place on the fifteenth day of the eighth month in the Lunar Calendar, which falls somewhere between late September and early October on the Gregorian calendar. Celebrations of the festival are said to go back nearly 1,400 years. Celebrations vary slightly but the most common form of celebrating is to gather with friends, stare at the moon and eat moon cakes. The tradition of having moon cakes also has a debatable history. However, the most prominent story I've heard involves Cheng'e having been an excellent baker and possibly sending down the moon cakes as expressions of her love each year. Regardless, we can say that people enjoy them to remember her baking skills and their circular shape obviously commemorates the importance of the moon. Although mostly people just eat them to keep with tradition.

Giving moon cakes to friends leading up to the Mid-Autumn Festival and on the day itself is an expression of friendship and best wishes. In business circles, they are also given as gifts in business deals and can be quite expensive when for that purpose though plenty of inexpensive options are available in grocery stores all over the country. Each year my university gives us foreign teachers a nice box set of moon cakes. This year my good friend Jason and I decided to put our taste buds to the test as we had a taste-testing marathon to rate these special treats. See the next blog A Taste of a Different Tradition (Moon Cakes!) for the sometimes yummy and most often difficult to swallow details!!