All of Hong Kong, China, Japan, and Vietnam (among other countries) celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival this past week. Last year, Aaron and I met up with friends at the most popular spot in Hong Kong to admire the full harvest moon. This year was much more cozy on Lamma.
A few days before the festival, parents and children met at Maeli’s school to have a little lantern parade.
The week before the festival, each child made a lantern out of paint, paper, and thin plastic. The nicest feature was a real flame inside. Most lanterns are bought in Hong Kong, and they tend to boast bright lights and high pitched music. But Maeli’s lantern glowed of personal touch, which follows Steiner/Waldorf tradition.
We all gathered inside the school house and settled in for a story. Lynn, Maeli’s teacher, told a traditional Chinese tale about Mid -Autumn Festival. There are countless versions of this story, but each essentially involve a married couple, 10 moons (9 of which are shot down by the husband), an elixir of life, the wife flying to the moon, and a yearly meeting of the couple on Mid-Autumn festival.
Unlike the West’s “man in the moon”, Chinese tend to say that you can see the woman from the story in the moon. Some Chinese see a rabbit making moon cakes in the moon, which is just a spin-off of the Mid-Autumn tale.
A few days later, on the actual full moon evening, we headed to one of Lamma’s beaches to check out the local scene.
One beach was partying rave-style, with house music and endless glow sticks. There weren’t many people there, nor many families, so we moved on.
The next beach over, which is the public beach, flamed with life. Groups clustered on the beach with multiple ways to brighten up their own little area. Some groups encircled themselves in candles while other’s made fences out of glow sticks. Children ran wild. Maeli found all of her friends, and Aaron and I quickly became engaged with ours. There was no music but the sound of the waves. Maeli hid glow sticks in the sand and quested for treasure. Glow sticks do make fine treasure for a three year old. The night was a sweet treat.
The main activity of Mid-Autumn Festival is to go outside at night to celebrate the moon. I would like to have a topical photograph of Asia on this night compared to other nights. The brightness of the evening would no doubt impress.
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