My September 2008 trip to China has been filling my mind this month. The talk of Moon Festival or Mid-Autumn Festival this weekend have brought back so many memories of my trip. There aren’t many holidays in China so the ones they do have they celebrate. The Moon Festival is second to the Spring Festival (AKA Chinese New Year) and is close to the equivalent of the American Thanksgiving.
The celebration is based on the rise of the Harvest Moon. For Moon Festival families travel from all over to return to their hometown to celebrate with their families with a feast, fireworks, and consuming many Mooncakes, which is a small pastry traditionally filled with a lotus seed paste but now you can also get cream cheese, green tea, chocolate or even chicken floss.
In thinking about my time in China, I pulled out my blog entries about my Moon Festival…
Sunday night was the Moon Festival. This is a huge holiday here. We stopped on the way back from Wudang to buy some more Moon Cakes, which are only made this time of year. Kind of like the bunny and chick Peeps. We had a good dinner for the festival followed by fireworks. Two of Chen’s friends came over for the fireworks. One was the driver of the Citroën we had the last two days and another was the guy with the nice car who drove us to the tea farm for our hike. The Citroën driver proposed to Maria. Apparently for the second time. I got an introduction for marriage with the other guy. They told me he was a banker from a good family. Hmmm. I just don’t think I am ready to settle down and start a family in Yan Che village.
After the fireworks we had a bonfire in the courtyard. Jing sang some traditional songs for us and Lilian sang a lovely song. It was cloudy so we could not see the full moon. I was exhausted from the trip down Wudang and went to bed as soon after the bonfire and singing. It was so nice to have a comfortable bed and modern bathroom
Monday night we could see the full moon so we extended the Moon Festival one night. Chen opened the Moutai, an herbal wine they tell me is he national drink. After that he opened up some of the Kung Fu wine. We drink this in small glasses about the size of a shot glass. These are both about as strong as a port wine so when you are drinking small portions it really isn’t much. Some of our group gets hit hard by it. It doesn’t really affect me too much.
That night some of us went to the courtyard with an iPod and speakers and danced our hearts out. After several drinks later I must have been a little tipsy as I realized the next morning I sent some incomprehensible text messages. Sorry about that. The Pearl is not that easy to type on sometimes. It was a good time.
