Chinese Moon Festival

Sunday was the Moon Festival, or the Mid-Autumn Festival, one of the most important Chinese events, similar to our Thanksgiving or Christmas celebrations.

The Moon Festival takes place when the moon is supposed to be at its biggest and brightest, and if you witnessed the moon on Sunday, you would probably agree that it was extraordinarily bright. In fact, it was so bright that I had to put on sunglasses just to take the garbage to the curb.

Families gather together and eat moon cakes, just like we would gather 'round the Thanksgiving turkey. During our first Moon Festival, under our Chinese-inspired chandelier, Suz and I shared a moon cake given to us the day before. On Saturday we had taken the DeLorean to visit Robert & Leuming, the previous owners of our new house. We were just planning on dropping off some mail, but we were invited inside to see the house, and it was incredible.

The Chinese hold gift-giving in high regard, and in that tradition Leuming very kindly gave us a moon cake to eat during the celebration. After we thanked them, we hopped in the D, and took our incredibly fancy cake home. The cake was dense, and could be held easily in the palm of one hand. It was so intricately detailed that I felt bad cutting it in half, and even worse eating, thus destroying it.

Chinese legend says that Chang Er, wife of Yi, flew to the moon after Yi had used his archery skills to shoot nine of the ten suns that withered our planet. And thank goodness he did! That kind of heat can probably melt bricks. I cannot imagine how high our electricity bill would be with our air conditioning trying to cope with that mess.