Mid-Autumn Festival

On the fifteenth day of the eighth moon of the lunar calendar, traditional Chinese families and their friends gather together and watch the moon and celebrate this holiday. It is said that on this day in September the moon is fullest and most brilliant.

As in most ethnic holidays, there are legends to honor. The most popular legend for this holiday is traced to the year 2000 B.C. This is the story of Hou Yih, an officer of the imperial guards.

Hou's great skills of shooting nine suns out of the sky and his seamless work of building a palace made of multicolored jade pleased the Goddess of the Western Heaven. She gave him the elixir of immortality in the form of a pill. Hou's wife was a divinely beautiful woman named Chang Oh. One day she discovered the hidden pill and she swallowed it. The resulting punishment was immediate and Chang Oh found herself airborne, bound for eternal banishment on the moon. Chang Oh's divine beauty enhanced the brilliance of the moon with her own radiance. Now, Chinese people bring fruits and gather each Mid-autumn Festival to admire her. Thus, Mid-Autumn Festival is a time for family reunions. On this night, families will go together to scenic spots and parks for moon appreciation parties, eating moon cakes and pomeloes in the cool night air and praying for a safe year.

Like most Chinese festivals, this festival has its own special food called Moon Cake. Chinese all around the world consumes millions of Moon Cakes during this time. The varieties are numerous. One can easily find at least a dozen different types. In substance, the traditional Moon Cake is a baked pastry filled with lotus seed paste and a salted egg yolk in the center. Modern inspirations and the cost of lotus seed paste have lead to the creation of many different types of fillings. Winter melon paste, red bean paste, mung bean paste, mixed nuts, dried fruits, and even ham are used to add variety to Moon Cakes. The cakes are about 3 inches squared.

According to Chinese legend, moon cakes helped bring about a revolution. The time was the Yuan dynasty (AD 1280-1368), established by the invading Mongolians from the north.

A Han Chinese rebel leader named Liu Fu Tong devised a scheme to arouse the Han Chinese to rise up against the ruling Mongols to end the oppressive Yuan dynasty. He sought permission from Mongolian leaders to give gifts to friends as a symbolic gesture to honor the longevity of the Mongolian emperor.
These gifts were round moon cakes. Inside, Liu had his followers place pieces of paper with the date the Han Chinese were to strike out in rebellion -- on the fifteenth night of the eighth month. Thus Liu got word to his people, who when they cut open the moon cakes found the revolutionary message and set out to overthrow the Mongols, thus ending the Yuan dynasty.

Today, far from the exotic and heroic legends, Chinese communities all over the world make and consume moon cakes during the traditional Mid-autumn Festival.