Asians around the world are preparing to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival aka the Moon Festival. September 14 will be the date for the 2008 festivities. The festival is popular in China, Vietnam, Korea, and other east-Asia nations.

I’ve talked about other Chinese holidays (Seven-Seven and the Dragon Boat Festival). The Mid-Autumn Festival originates from a folktale about a rabbit, an archer and his beautiful wife, immortality, and celestial bodies.

This is no simple holiday, like Christmas. There’s no man in a red suit giving you presents. It’s complicated stuff; you need Cliff’s Notes to keep the characters straight. Luckily, dear reader, you have an intrepid journalist deep in the heart of (south) China, willing to go to any length to get the skinny on this fête.

…there was an immortal named Houyi, part of the court of the Jade Emperor, the King of Heaven. Before they wed, Houyi’s lovely wife Chang’e, had been an attendant to the Queen Mother of the West (the Emperor’s wife).

Houyi the archer and Chang'e the lady on the moon.

The immortals, probably because they had little else to do (and bowling had yet to be invented) liked to squabble. Houyi somehow aroused the other immortals’ jealousy. Being petty, they slandered Houyi before the Jade Emperor. He and Chang’e were banished from heaven. The couple lived upon the earth and hunted to survive. Houyi became a famous archer.

In the days of yor, 10 suns circled the earth, a different one each day. Then: Catastrophe. All 10 suns appeared in the sky the same day. The earth was a mess. Crops were scorched, people received nasty burns (SPF ratings, like bowling, had not been invented yet) and without the invention of electricity there wasn’t a cold Coke in sight.

China’s Emperor Yao commanded Houyi to shoot down nine of the 10 suns, lest The Middle Kingdom be destroyed. Houyi, skilled bow-and-arrow dude that he was, complied and shot the fiery balls of gas from the heavens. The Emperor was pleased and gave Houyi a pill that granted eternal life, but warned the archer to fast and reflect for one year before taking it.

At home, Houyi hid the pill in the rafters and started to prepare himself as instructed. Enter Chang’e. She noticed a beam of light from the rafters and discovered the pill. Houyi returned and she swallowed the pill to mask her discovery. He wasn’t pleased, and berated her for her transgression. The pill had given her the power to fly, and that she did, into the sky. Her husband chased her until a strong wind forced him to return to earth.

Chang’e ended up on the moon. her flying powers spent. She coughed and half the pill fell from her mouth. She lived with the Jade Rabbit, that according to Chinese mythology, resides on the moon.  The rabbit, an apothecary to the immortals, was put to work trying to replicate the second half of the pill so she could return to earth.

The Jade Rabbit, resident of the moon.

Aside: There are many explanations for the rabbit on the moon. Some versions say Chang’e took the rabbit with her, another says the rabbit was already in residence, having been given a place in the moon palace after sacrificing himself for three hungry sages.

Somehow, Houyi built himself a palace on the sun. Once a year, on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month – Mid-Autumn Festival – he visits his wife, thus explaining the moon’s brightness on this day. Houyi was the yang (male symbol) and Chang’e, the ying (female symbol).

Trying to decipher this tale is difficult. In one version Houyi is a tyrant that saves the world from the suns and then takes the throne. He has his court wizards prepare a elixir of immortality so he can be king forever. Chang’e doesn’t like her husband’s despotic rule and steals the elixir so he can’t lord over his subjects for eternity. Another tale is similar to the story of Pandora’s Box.

Mid-Autumn festival is the second most important Chinese Holiday (Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year being the first). It’s a time for family reunions and a celebration of the harvest.

The food of the festival is the Moon Cake: Lotus seed paste wrapped in a thin pastry. Egg yolks or salted eggs are often the center of the cakes. It is a heavy delicacy, often eaten in small portions with tea.

From Wikipedia:
Traditional mooncakes have an imprint on top consisting of the Chinese characters for “longevity” or “harmony” as well as the name of the bakery and filling in the moon cake. Imprints of a moon, a woman on the moon, flowers, vines, or a rabbit may surround the characters for additional decoration.

Mooncakes are expensive and considered a delicacy, and production is labor-intensive and few people make them at home. Most mooncakes are bought at Asian markets and bakeries. The price of mooncakes range from $10 to $50 (in US money).

The holiday can be traced back to 1060 BCE, to the Chinese Xia and Shang Dynasties. It was during the Tang Dynasty (5th to 8th centuries) that it became very popular. With the recent change in national holidays, Mid-Autumn festival is now a day off. Previously it was celebrated but not granted “day off” status.

What do people for Mid-Autumn festival? Simple: Go to a restaurant or someone’s home. Eat a big meal, drink, and consume moon cakes. A less-than-reliable website has a different idea, it lists the following as the activities engaged in:

A mooncake - the food of Mid-Autumn Festival.

• Eating moon cakes outside under the moon
• Putting pomelo rinds on one’s head
• Carrying brightly lit lanterns
• Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang’e
• Planting Mid-Autumn trees
• Lighting lanterns on towers
• Fire Dragon Dances

I should be Wiki’s man on the ground. That list is not entirely correct.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival. I’ll be thinking of you while eating moon cakes.

Flag waving in Tiananmen Square during the 2006 National Day celebrations. Photo by: People's Daily Online.

China turns 60 years old on October 1.

National Day will see China the nation celebrate the founding of the People’s Republic of China. It’s a week-long holiday, the last of the year, with parades, gala television specials, and flags-a-waving.

Guóqìngjié (guo: country, qing: celebration, jie: day) or National Day turns Chinese cities and towns into a sea of red and yellow flags. Like the Spring Festival holiday (Chinese New Year) many people use the time off to travel home. My town will likely see 10 of the 12 million residents fly, bus, and train their way back to Hunan, Guangxi, Hubei, and Sichuan provinces. Like North America, businesses will offer sales ‘o plenty. Department and electronics store will offer deals like their western counterparts.

China fought a 23 year civil war, much of it while trying to repel Japanese invaders during the second world war. The Kuomintang (KMT) and Communists forces battled across the nation in a conflict that left millions dead. After the Japanese surrender, the People’s Liberation Army was able to turn the tide against the nationalists, and push the remaining KMT forces into south China.

Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949 in Beijing. The KMT forces retreated to Taiwan, continuing the Republic of China and claiming the entire nation, in exile. There was no clear-cut resolution; no armistice has ever been signed in the conflict. Tensions have (and still do) flare over the issue. One KMT division, based in Burma (Myanmar) continued with a guerrilla campaign that lasted into the 1960s. (The Division eventually settled in northern Thailand. There is a Thai village, full of Chinese houses. The residents speak Yunanese, a Chinese dialect.)

China’s National Day, Guóqìngjié, celebrates the re-birth of a nation.

Happy 60th Birthday China. Guóqìngjié kuai le.

I doubt this tunnel connecting Chairman Mao’s childhood home to the rest of Shaoshan village in Hunan, China, was ever used by Mao Zedong.  It’s probably a hold-over from the heady days of the Cultural Revolution when Shaoshan was much like Disneyland.

Not being traversed by a former communist party chairman, the tunnel is now used by tourists and the touts that cover Shaoshan like flies on a dead squirrel. Above: Mrs. Stevo and a tout. Friendly Mrs. Stevo talks to everyone. The above tout followed us as we toured the Mao manse, giving us facts and trivia. After walking through the tunnel we were invited to her home, which happened to be a restaurant.

The knocker on the "temple" door atop Shao Hill Peak (Shaoshan feng),

Shaoshan, Hunan, China is the pinnacle of capitalism.  The residents of the rural village provide tourists with everything they need: Food, accommodations, transportation, and unneeded tours and advice. The villagers hustle as well as street touts in Beijing, Hong Kong, or Bangkok.

Mao Zedong, the former Chinese leader, was born in Shaoshan, and the kin of his former neighbors have cashed in on their most famous resident. Mao would probably have mixed feelings about what his ancestral village has become (or maybe not, I don’t have a Chinese Ouija board to call up Chairman Mao).

Deng Xiaoping, who followed Mao as the leader of China and was responsible for Reform and Opening policies, would probably congratulate the villagers for their capitalistic spirit and moxie.  Chairman Deng once famously said, “To be rich (is) glorious.”

The above image is of a door knocker at a ‘temple’ atop Shao Hill Peak, a mountain above the Shaoshan.  While one Taoist temple at the peak looks genuine, this one does not. As I said, touts with capitalistic spirit and moxie.

I wanted to shoot Shamian Island in Guangzhou. I’d been there before, briefly, at night. Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province, China, is only 90 minutes from my place in Shenzhen – a quick trip.

Usually, I take the first bus to Guangzhou, leaving at 6:30 and arriving at 8:00. There’s still a little bit of morning light to play with. I hummed and hawed that morning and didn’t leave until 7:45. By the time I arrived in the former-Canton it was hot:  I-think-I-may-melt sort of hot.

I jumped on the Guangzhou Metro and got off at the Huangsha stop. After navigating a construction zone and an overpass I crossed the fabled bridge onto the former French and British concession.

I walked the narrow streets, sweating, and looked at the manses and the people. Older folks moved with fluid slowness in a park by the Pearl River, doing their morning Tai Chi. Small groups of dancers practiced the Cha Cha as music played from boom boxes. Shamian Boulevard is the island’s main east-west thoroughfare. The road’s center strip changes over its length. Small parks, playground equipment, and fountains, can be found in the Boulevard center.

One block of Victorian buildings was being renovated. I drifted over, camera in hand. I knelt and captured a few images. I heard a voice while wiping the sweat from my face (and the back of my camera).

“Hello!”

The young man, in his 20s, was jacked. The first thing I noticed was his pecs. After a year of bench presses I was nowhere close to being that big.  I was envious, his physique was unusual for a Chinese male. He had put in some time at the gym. His entire upper body bulged with muscles. He was shirtless and sweatless.

The “hello” had been gruff, more of an order than a greeting. I took in his size, considered his voice, and wondered if I might be in trouble. No, not on Shamian Island. There were hundreds of people around, a tourist area. Notwithstanding, my hand held my Canon 40D a little tighter.

“I want to practice my English,” he said. It wasn’t a request but a command.

“Sure,” I replied, a nervous smile on my face.

“I want to go to America and play basketball with American boys.”

“You like basketball?” Silly question. It may be genetic or an additive in the rice: All of China’s young men like basketball. The WWE is gaining a foothold in China but the likes of Triple-H and The Edge overtaking Kobe Bryant in popularity is a long way off.

“Yes. Where are you from?”

“Canada, near Toronto.”

“Raptors. Chris Bosh,” he said. There was a hint of a smile on his face, he wasn’t nearly as gruff.

I haven’t followed basketball since coming to China in 2005. Other than a few superstars I know few players in the NBA.

“I used to like Vince Carter,” I opined. I wiped my face again. I was sweating from the moist heat and nerves.

“That was long ago,” he said.

I nodded.

“Who do you like?” I asked.

He rhymed off players and teams. I nodded faux-wisely.

“My oral English is very poor since I finished college,” he said.

“No, it’s quite good.”

“I want to learn American English and slang. My college teacher was from the UK so I watched American movies and television shows. Prison Break.”

I explained I had been a teacher but now took photos. I pointed at the buildings. “When will you go to America,” I asked.

“When I save enough money,” he said.

The conversation fell into a lull. Despite the heat he was still dry. I looked as if I had been swimming in the nearby Pearl River. I made an excuse and my escape. He shook my wet hand and returned to the exercise equipment and his friends.

I breathed a sign of relief and went back to taking a visual inventory of Shamian Da Dao. The light had gone from passable to horrible. I would make mental notes and estimations, and come back another time.

A hint of scary, and random fun conversations: Such is my life in China.

It’s party time in the Middle Kingdom. Well, er, no actually. May 28 brings the calendar around to the yearly Dragon Boat Festival, or duānwǔ jié (端午節).

Many cities in North America celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival, or the Tuen Ng Festival, as it’s known in Cantonese. My former Canadian city held dragon boat races each June, in which drunken and out-of-shape businessmen raced big boats on a local river. None of them knew what the races represented, except a reason to be publicly intoxicated, and risk drowning hoping to win a trophy.

Like most folk festivals, the roots of the Dragon Boat Festival are not particularly pleasant. In the days of yor (or China’s Warring States Period), lived Qu Yuan, a government minister with the Chu regime. He was a good man that wanted to maintain Chu’s sovereignty in the face of the Qin dynasty’s advances (Did you see Hero, with Jet Li? Same time period.)

Qu Yuan was cast out of court by jealous and corrupt ministers. Depressed by thinking about the future, he wandered the countryside composing poems from folktales. His works are still considered classics in Chinese literature.

After the Chu capital was captured by Qin forces in 278 BC, Qu Yuan grabbed a rock and walked into a local river to commit suicide, a protest against the excesses and corruption of the new Qin Kingdom.

There a few different stories as to what happened next.

The more heroic version has local villagers racing across the river in their boats, attempting to rescue Qu Yuan. Today’s dragon boat races commemorate the villagers efforts to save the poet.

In an alternate version, the villagers take to their boats, bang drums and throw food into the water to keep the fish from eating Qu Yuan’s body. The zongzi, a reed-wrapped rice dumpling, was the food used to prevent aquatic creatures from consuming Qu Yuan’s remains. Zongzi, the traditional festival food, is eaten each year during the celebrations.

Of course, just like Christian holidays (Christmas and Easter’s pagan roots), there is yet a third explanation. Scholars have discovered other festivals in China, celebrating the harvest of winter wheat, held about the same time each year as Qu Yuan’s protest. These agrarian festivals were held in areas that knew nothing of Qu Yuan or his final swim. Researchers speculate that the harvest festivals and Qu Yuan’s legacy merged.

This historic day was made a national holiday a 2008  government revamp of holidays. International Labor Day (May 1) used to be a three day holiday, which was usually extended to five days to stimulate tourism. It was a dandy break, exactly half-way through the school term. This was nixed, and three long weekends, one in April, May, and June were substituted. It’s a lot like Canada and her summer long weekends.

I’m always happy to have a day off, especially when it involves eating dumplings and listening to sad yet heroic old tales.
qu yuan image from: biografiasyvidas.com
dragonboatimage from: chinatownconnection.com
zongzi image from: china.org.cn