No time for sadness
Local Chinese student discovers harvest festivals common around the world
Recently, as I made way back to the dormitory from our library at Cape Breton University, I found a bright moon shinning high in the sky. This was a reminder to me that the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, Oct. 4, is coming.
The main reason for ancient Chinese people to celebrate this festival was to give thanks to the harvest, but to me the Mid-Autumn Festival is an event full of sweet moon cakes, magical legends, happily smiles on people’s faces and the gentle, bright moonlight spread from the silver plate-like moon.
Moon cakes are to the MidAutumn Festival what mincemeat pies are to Christmas. It is a kind of seasonal round cake with a sweet filling of lotus seed paste or red bean paste. Nowadays there is more often one or more salted duck egg yolks in the center to represent the moon. And on the surface of the moon cake there are usually stamped Chinese characters indicating the name of the bakery or the type of filling used.
When I was a child, I used to live with my grandparents in a small village in the northeast of China. In my opinion, ancient traditions are always well kept there and the atmosphere is more harmonious than that of big cities.
Almost two weeks before the Mid-Autumn Festival, my grandma and all the female relatives of the family began to gather together when they were free in the daytime to make moon cakes by hand, and I was allowed to help. We put fillings into the dough, then into the wood mold to form the beautiful shape. But actually I have no idea about the making process. I just liked the feeling of the sweetness melt in my heart. Nowadays we buy moon cakes but we do not like to eat them, because moon cakes are not for the diet-conscious as they are loaded with calories.
In the evening of Mid-Autumn Festival all family members gather together to enjoy a big feast and, of course, share moon cakes just under the glorious full moon and express strong yearnings toward family members and friends who live afar. It is said that this day’s moon is the brightest and roundest of the year which means family reunion. Therefore, Mid-Autumn Festival is also called “Reunion Festival” in China.
During the feast, my grandpa would like to tell the little children, including me, the mysterious legend about the moon. I do not know whether Cape Breton has this kind of legend or not.
One of these legends involved a beautiful woman named Chang E, a white rabbit with big red eyes and a strong man named Wu Gang living in a Jade Palace on the moon with a big Osmanthus tree in the courtyard. Chang E occasionally ate a kind of magic medicine and had to fly to the moon. She could not go back home and this made her very sad. The only companion for her is the white rabbit.
Wu Gang was punished for doing something wrong so he has to live there cutting the Osmanthus tree endlessly. Since the tree is a magic tree, it can never be hurt at all.
When we look up to the moon, we can see the shadows on it. Those are the shadows of Jade Palace and the big tree. We may even hear the sound of Wu Gang cutting the tree in the quiet midnight. We children really believed that they were living on the moon at that time. I even hope to go to the moon and have a look one day.
There are also many poems written about Mid-Autumn Festival, especially the beautiful moon, to express the yearning for family members afar and sometimes nostalgia.
Poets are never tired of reading and writing such poems. Imagine during that particular night the world enveloped in moonlight. A poetic feeling arises and softly pervades in the atmosphere. The air is suffused with a sweet scent, driving away all the annoyance, soothing the distressed and wretched souls. There is a sound rising from the bottom of my heart:
“How long will the full moon appear?
Wine cup in hand, I ask the sky.
I do not know what time of the year
it would be tonight in the palace on high …
(From an ancient Chinese poem written by Su Shi, translated by Yuan Chong, Xu)
That is why when I saw the moonlight spread down from the sky, I began to get homesick. It will be my first MidAutumn Festival so far, far, far away from home. And the moon’s brightness and dimness truly illustrate the sorrow and joy deep down in my heart.
But there is no time for me to be sad again. I know Thanksgiving is coming. It is my first Thanksgiving here in Canada and I was told that the origins of Canadian Thanksgiving are sometimes traced to the French settlers who came to New France in the 16th century. And they had big feasts to celebrate their successful harvests, too.
What a small world then. Though there are thousands of miles between China to Canada, but we will all share the beauty of the same moon displays.
“That is why when I saw the moonlight spread down from the sky, I began to get homesick. It will be my first Mid-Autumn Festival so far, far, far away from home.”
Amy Li is a native of Beijing, China. She is studying Pre-MBA courses in ICEAP on the Cape Breton University Campus. Her column will appear monthly during which she hopes to share with readers stories about China and also comment on the people, places and customs she discovers during her stay in Cape Breton.