WHAT IS MID-AUTUMN FESTIVAL AND WHY CELEBRATE?
Dear Reader,
Moon Cakes, a veritable genre of pastry, variation on a theme, are back in Carrefour. But Mid-Autumn Festival isn't until October this year. Why?
We arrived in China the beginning of September in 2004. Our local Carrefour was filled with small round pastries, filled with god-knows-whats, baked with an imprinted design on the top. We thought, "Oh, popular Chinese pastry. Very popular, everywhere." We thought they'd always be around. Wrong.
Many things in China have no analogy to life in the "old country." Not this. In SoCal, or Southern California, you can walk into your local grocery store the day after a holiday, and merchandise for the next holiday is already on the floor. The day after Halloween, Thanksgiving merchandise has been stocked immediately. As soon as New Year's is over, the Valentine's Day stuff appears. Then it's St. Patrick's Day. Well, that is the mystery we've solved by two years of living through the Mid-Autumn Festival.
The story of the lady in the moon was explained with best efforts by students and friends but here is Wikipedia's version. I can paste a hyperlink, but if you live in China, forget it. You can't get there from here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Mid-Autumn_Festival
Moon Cakes, a veritable genre of pastry, variation on a theme, are back in Carrefour. But Mid-Autumn Festival isn't until October this year. Why?
We arrived in China the beginning of September in 2004. Our local Carrefour was filled with small round pastries, filled with god-knows-whats, baked with an imprinted design on the top. We thought, "Oh, popular Chinese pastry. Very popular, everywhere." We thought they'd always be around. Wrong.
Many things in China have no analogy to life in the "old country." Not this. In SoCal, or Southern California, you can walk into your local grocery store the day after a holiday, and merchandise for the next holiday is already on the floor. The day after Halloween, Thanksgiving merchandise has been stocked immediately. As soon as New Year's is over, the Valentine's Day stuff appears. Then it's St. Patrick's Day. Well, that is the mystery we've solved by two years of living through the Mid-Autumn Festival.
The story of the lady in the moon was explained with best efforts by students and friends but here is Wikipedia's version. I can paste a hyperlink, but if you live in China, forget it. You can't get there from here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Mid-Autumn_Festival
posted by Anonymous at 1:20 PM
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