So this past Thursday was the Mid-Autumn Festival here in Hong Kong. This is a traditional harvest festival held on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar on the night of the full moon. The celebrations for Mid-Autumn happen at night so people get out of work around lunch time and then get the next day off, so it’s a nice long weekend. There are big gatherings and lantern displays in many cities and it is also a time when people travel home to have dinner and spend time with their families.
We went to the big celebration in Victoria Park on Hong Kong Island. There were performances and food vendors and amazing lantern displays. There was also a fire dragon dance in which a 65(ish) meter dragon made out of incense is lit and paraded around. The smell is so strong and there is so much smoke from it that it makes your eyes water. Of course the crowds were so insane it was very difficult to get a good picture of the dragon. Also before they lit the dragon there were some performances essentially to open for the dragon dance, but it was bagpipes and Irish step dancing and the announcer was speaking only in Cantonese so I really have no idea how that all fit together.
Since the full moon is a big part of Mid-Autumn mooncakes are also a huge part of the celebration. I haven’t gotten a definitive answer about the origin of the mooncake tradition but one explanation I got was a myth about mooncakes being used by the Ming revolutionaries in their effort to overthrow the Mongolian rulers of China at the end of the Yuan dynasty. Supposedly, they circulated a rumor that a deadly plague was spreading and that the only way to prevent it was to eat special mooncakes, which would revive and give special powers to the user. This led to the quick distribution of mooncakes which had a message (coordinating the Han Chinese revolt on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month) printed on the surfaces of mooncakes (which came in packages of four), as a simple puzzle or mosaic. To read the message, each of the four mooncakes was cut into four parts. The resulting 16 pieces were pieced together to reveal the message. The pieces of mooncake were then eaten to destroy the message.
Today there are two main kinds of mooncakes in Hong Kong, traditional and snowy. The traditional mooncakes have an egg yolk in the center and the snowy ones have a variety of fillings and are covered in something similar to mochi. I’m a huge fan of the snowy ones and needless to say I spent my Mid-Autumn eating a ton of mooncakes! (the one below is a traditional mooncake… I was too busy eating the snowy ones to take a picture)
Where in the World is Laura Holmes? 