Mid-Autumn Festival

Yesterday was the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, which by design roughly coincides with the Autumn Equinox and a full moon.  There's a mythological story that goes along with it, too, of course, that goes something like this: one day there are 12 suns in the sky, and they're burning everything on earth.  This guy has to shoot them down with his bow and arrow (I guess nunchucks hadn't been invented), and in return he is given some special pill, put he's not supposed to take it for a year.  His wife finds it and takes it (hmm? Eve? Pandora?), and it makes her float to the moon where she has to stay for all eternity (hence they have a woman on the moon, not a man in the moon).  There's something about a rabbit on the moon, too.  Anyway, on the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the man can go visit his wife on the moon.  Hooray!  Naturally, this exciting fact is celebrated every year with food that is bad for you, namely, moon cakes.  Moon cakes are round, individual-size, dense, rich treats.  On the top there's a Chinese design that indicates what's inside of them, as there are a few different kinds.  The basic kind has a whole egg yolk in the middle of the dense cake, which is supposed to symbolize the moon.  They're good, except for the egg yolk, which is bad, and which also smells funny.

 

We had moon cakes at work, and the pseudo-English-speaker at the tea house gave me a moon cake, with a note that let's just say indicated he took his English lessons at the Hallmark store.