Mid Autumn Festival

Also known as mooncake festival or tang lung (lantern) festival. Falls on the 15th day of the 8th moon chinese lunar calendar. Which is... today! In Chinese it's called the "Zhong qiu" Festival (pronounced 'jong chew'). Honestly, I never knew all that before today.

This is apparently a big day for the chinese people. Families would gather for dinner and children would play outside and walk the streets with their tang lungs. It's a day of celebration (eating mooncakes and playing with lantern or fire). When I was much younger, we played lanterns together too. I had my shares of burnt lanterns. As we grew, all the colourful lantern got boring and we starting playing with candles and fire. Yes, we ocassionally burn our own fingers by accident. (Parents please be wary of your children playing with fire. There's been reports of house burning down by accidents in the past)

But overall, especially now, the festival don't mean much to me. It's a nice time to watch the streets. Parks are beatifully lit with colourful and bobbing lanterns. Romantic.


(pic) Lantern playing after cell. Phone and PDA phone not that good.

But overall, most chinese people themselves have forgotten the initial significance of the festival. There are actually many nonsensical legend surrounding this festival involving a women on the moon. Noone actually knows which the original is. Wikipedia has most of the versions in archive. But the story that my dad told me, seems to me to be the most likely. The story goes that it was during the reign of Mongolian people in China and the people wanted to rebel. So on this night they made mooncakes with secret messages in it and took lanterns into the streets on the pretext of giving mooncakes to all their neighbours. Of course people found the message inside on plans of the rebel and so managed to attack the government. Full story here, scroll down under "mooncake".

Here's a nice scripting trick to wish you all a Happy Mid-Autumn Festival. (that's what I was told the words on the paper said - am illiterate lerrr)

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I also discovered (yesterday) that my birthday falls on the 23rd day of the 6th moon chinese lunar calendar. Meaning this year (2006) it fell on the 18th of July. Can i celebrate twice? hahaha... (I used a western-chinese calendar converter to determine the date. These days everything is online)

I know my grandma's chinese birthday is the 5th day of the 5th moon. She never knew her english date. So our family celebrates her chinese birthday - if there's such a thing.