The Mid-Autumn Festival

Students of Chinese can appreciate the small sense of satisfaction I felt at being present for the passing of the Mid-Autumn Festival last night. For about the first three weeks of second year Chinese, we read texts revolving around celebrating the festival at a professor’s house, performed skits involving explaining the festival to American visitors, and spent countless classes repeating “No, I have never before tried mooncakes”. This mysterious holiday (our teachers’ explanations were vague at best) became a sort of a running joke among our class, all wondering exactly what the fuss was about, and what a mooncake was.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is a celebration of the harvest, but also a time to gather together with family and celebrate this reunion. For weeks beforehand, people buy lavishly presented boxes of mooncakes and give them to friends, coworkers and relatives. I’d seen advertisements and price listings all over the place, but had not as yet encountered a mooncake until last Friday, when Yazhen managed to land a ridiculously expensive set of rounded boxes, lined in cloth and holding smaller emblazoned boxes of mooncakes. Since then I encountered several at breakfasts over the weekend, a few that were given to us by the teaching staff, and the piles that were being sold outside the cafeteria yesterday. A mooncake is somewhat larger than a hostess cupcake, and the outside is an intricately decorated cookie-like pastry with various designs on top. There are several different fillings, all equally dense. Most seem to be made from plums and other fruit, and is very similar in taste and consistency to a fig newton. I also encountered one more chocolatey one, several with egg yolks baked in, and one unidentifiable golden caky thing that was quite good.

When the day itself comes, the celebration seems to be limited to sitting outside and looking at the harvest moon. I could have gone to the most touristy site in Hangzhou, an island in the lake that has some sort of lunar significance, but a birthday party and better sense about avoiding big crowds kept me back, so I got my moon-enjoyment in while walking from the dorm to the taxi stop to hit a bar as part of the birthday celebration. To give some better perspective, Xiaojun met up with some classmates and sat on a bench in a campus park eating snacks. All in all, not the most boisterous holiday, but I like the simplicity of it, especially given all the hype (Chinese people love explaining their traditions to foreigners). And anyway, now I can no longer truthfully say “我从来没吃过月饼”.