Mid-Autumn Festival

One thing about moving back to Asia is getting reacquainted with the Asian holidays again, or I should specify, the Chinese one For example, this past weekend was mid-autumn festival, which is during the time of the month on Chinese calendar that the moon is suppose to be round. Mid-Autumn festival is the celebration of the moon, and everyone eats mooncakes. It is a holiday in Taiwan, but it is not a holiday in Hong Kong, instead, in Hong Kong, it is only a holiday the day after the Mid-Autumn festival, which I guess makes some sense as the Mid-Autumn festival is sort of a night time thing, and people stay up late and need their rest the next day. What was disappointing though, was the fact that in Hong Kong, Saturday is technically still a work day for the government and many businesses, and thus, when the Mid-Autumn festival (or any other holidays for that matter) falls on a Saturday, they don’t make up the holiday. Therefore, for people like us who already have Saturday off, it is sort of meaningless, except for the fact that my mom wanted me to go back to Taiwan to keep her company, and that our extended family was having dinner that weekend.

There is one thing that I really do like about the Chinese holidays, which are that most of them have a long history behind it, a story that often dates back hundreds of years, if not over a thousand years ago (I think the Mid-Autumn festival is over 3,000 over something like that). The traditions and the spirits of the many holidays live on, but in many ways, it has all been commercialized to a certain extent, and the original meaning distorted. I wonder if at school, they still teach kids about the meaning of these holidays, like who I was taught when I was in elementary school. The story that every Chinese know as to Mid-Autumn festival is the story of this girl who lives on the moon, and there is a little rabbit too. There are several versions of the story as to how she get on the moon, but it usually involves her taking a little pill that made her fly to the moon. At the same time, since the Mid-Autumn festival happens on a lunar calendar instead of the normal calendar that we uses, it often also signals the day that farmers celebrate the end of their summer harvest. Family often get together to watch the full moon, eat barbeques, mooncakes and pomeloes, with lanterns and lights abound. I find solace this year that I was able to spend the Mid-Autumn festival with my mom, as for many years, we have not spend time during the major Chinese holidays, such as Chinese new year, instead, we spend time usually during Christmas and the regular New Year, which, in Asia, are really not that important of a holiday. Christmas is more about gifts and presents than the gathering of families I guess I would say that Thanksgiving reminds me of Mid-Autumn festival, and that Christmas reminds me of the Chinese New Years. Perhaps because I spent my early days in Taiwan and later part of my life in North America, all four of the holidays seem important to me. Time with families and loved ones, at the end of the day, for me, are still the most important. What is a person if he/she has no family, no one to care for him/her and no one that he/she can care for, that he/she can be worried about? Enough rambling, time to go to bed, still a work day tomorrow