10/12/06 Moon Festival

On the Rio: Dylan and the Dead ~ Maggie's Farm

I missed the Chinese National Holiday, but made it back just in time for the Moon Festival.
Here is a picture I took (almost as good as the Reuters picture I posted a few months back).

The Chinese Moon Festival, or sometimes called the Mid-Autumn Festival, takes place on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. The festival dates back to the Tang dynasty 618 A.D. and celebrates the biggest and brightest full moon of the year, the harvest moon.

The Moon Festival is one of the most important traditional events for the Chinese and is full of legendary stories.

One of the legends about the Moon Festival is about a builder or architect named Hou Yih. Hou Yih built a beautiful jade palace for the Goddess of the Western Heaven or sometimes called the Royal Mother. The Goddess was so happy that she gave Hou Yih a special pill that contained the magic elixir of immortality. But with it came the condition and warning that he may not use the pill until he had accomplished certain things.

Hou Yih had a beautiful wife named Chang-Er. Chang-Er was as curious as she was beautiful. One day she found the pill and without telling her husband, she swallowed it.

The Goddess of the Western Heaven was very angry and as a punishment, Chang-Er was banished to the moon where, according to the legend, Chang-Er can be seen at her most beautiful on the night of the bright harvest moon.

The Moon Festival is also an occasion for family reunions. When the full moon rises, families get together to watch the full moon, eat moon cakes (which are round pastries filled with red bean paste, fruit or jam), and sing moon poems.

The Moon Festival is also a romantic one. A perfect night for the festival is if it is a quiet night without a silk of cloud and with a little mild breeze from the sea. Lovers spend such a romatic night together tasting the delicious moon cake with some wine while watching the full moon. Even for a couple who can't be together, they can still enjoy the night by watching the moon at the same time so it seems that they are together at that hour.