| Monday, October 02, 2006 |
| October Holiday |
After just finishing up our first week of teaching, we are now enjoying our first major Chinese holiday, the Mid-Autumn Festival. I know, I know, we've got it rough with one week on and one week off, but that's the way the schedule panned out this year. It's a little weird meeting your students for the first time and then saying goodbye for a week.
This week actually has two holidays, the National Day and the aforementioned Mid-Autumn Festival. National Day was on October 1st, and is pretty much the same thing as our July 4th, minus the fireworks. Some of our students, filled with patriotic zeal, decided to camp out in the birthplace of the People's Republic of China(Tiannamen Square) for the evening. Others are just excited about the time off. It runs the gamut. We were warned by one of our students to avoid Tiannamen on the 1st, since it would be overrun with masses upon masses of Chinese wanting to celebrate, and that all of the unique decorations would still be up by the end of the week. We'll be sure to get some pictures up.
The Mid-Autumn festival is highlighted by the eating of Moon Cakes, pictured below.
These little goodies are an ancient Chinese confectionery, about the size of a hockey puck, that for various reasons are eaten and exchanged at this time. Before your mouth begins to water, however, you should probably be aware that they are typically baked and consist of a thin tender skin enveloping a sweet and slightly oily filling. That filling usually contains single or multiple whole salted egg yolks in its center to symbolize the full moon. In other words, yuck. There are a few kinds we've tried that are filled by fruit and are edible, but that's few and far between.
The tradition behind them is a bit difficult to figure out. I quizzed my students on the story, and I got back two answers. One, they are a part of a Chinese myth, wherein an extremely handsome man may or may not have fallen in love with the moon goddess, and may or may not have eaten a moon cake to sprout wings and fly to the moon to court her. Yeah. Two, the Chinese word for "round" is similar to the word for "family," so the round cake represents the family time that happens during this holiday. Mostly, though, they are a way to build guanxi with people are exchanged. Our director once wrote an essay on them which describes all of this better than I am doing.
"Today is Zhong Qiu Jie, (lit. Mid-Autumn Festival) in China. In colloquial terms, it's called the Moon Festival, because it's celebration coincides with the full moon. Much like Thanksgiving in American culture, Moon Festival is a time when people want to gather with their family members. If that isn't possible, then people gather with classmates, colleagues, and other friends to gaze at the moon and think of their distant family membes who are also gazing at the same moon. Poets in the Tang Dynasty were prolific in their writing poems about the moon, so there's always a poem to be recited at a gathering.
Another custom on Moon Festival is the eating of mooncakes. It's hard to describe them exactly, but think of small, individually wrapped fruit-cakes. There is an outer crust with a super sweet filling. Usually they are very heavy, and laden with sugar and lard. Not being a fan of them, they sort of remind me of sweet hockey pucks.
Making and eating and giving mooncakes has always been part of the celebration here, but as China's level of prosperity has increased in the past number of years, like many other things here, mooncakes have sort of become an excess. In the weeks preceding Moon Festival, all the stores fill up with tables selling all manner of beautifully gift-wrapped mooncakes. They are elaborately packaged, and a 6 or 8 mooncakes in a beautiful box can easily cost 40 or 50 US dollars! The more expensive the mooncakes you give, the more face both the giver and receiver get.
Mooncakes must be sent to people with whom you do business. Clients send to suppliers, suppliers to clients. Mooncakes are exchanged among colleagues. Teachers give them to students; students to teachers. Friends to friends; family members to family members. It's one giant mooncake exchange.
And as foreigners who are trying to live as acceptable outsiders, we join in. Last night my professor and his family came to my house for dinner. When they walked in, he gave me a nice gift box of mooncakes. I said thanks, took them, and set them in the kitchen (it's not polite to open gifts here in the presence of the giver). When it was time for them to leave, I gave them a box of mooncakes. We all laughed at the fact that we were just exchanging boxes of mooncakes. I always enjoy my professor because of his ability to see the humor in his own society. He joked that at the end of the day, mooncakes don't really get eaten--they just get passed around, sometimes ending up back where they started. I said never mind, and told him that he was more than welcome to give away the box I was giving them. He said I could give away the box they gave me (which I plan to do).
Like many other things in a society like this that places a high value on ritual for the sake of ritual, the important thing is NOT the mooncake or the box or the value, but rather that the ritual of giving the mooncake is performed.
Mooncakes, anyone?"
So there you have it. If they actually sold Moon Cakes in the U.S. (which they don't, considering the great loss of money involved in creating an eatery that no one likes) I'd get one for each of you. Cause you're important and all.
Happy Moon Festival, everyone. |
posted by Aaron @ 10:08 AM  |
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| 5 Comments: |
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Sounds like the Chinese "mooncake" = American "fruitcake". Pass it on and on...Happy Holidays! The Apple Festival is this weekend in New Boston. I doubt I'll see a mooncake, but I'll gladly grab a slice of apple pie. Our One Year Anniversary at TOCC was great. The new building is nearer and nearer to completion. The kids are working on a musical to be presented in December. Well, gotta watch Monday night Football (Eagles and Pack), no sense in watching the 0-4 Lions anymore..FYI your broncs are 2-1.
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"Sounds like the Chinese "mooncake" = American "fruitcake". Pass it on and on...Happy Holidays! The Apple Festival is this weekend in New Boston. I doubt I'll see a mooncake, but I'll gladly grab a slice of apple pie. Our One Year Anniversary at TOCC was great. The new building is nearer and nearer to completion. The kids are working on a musical to be presented in December. Well, gotta watch Monday night Football (Eagles and Pack), no sense in watching the 0-4 Lions anymore..FYI your broncs are 2-1."
A few days before we moved in, a friend told us about a program you can download and watch football over the internet. Needless to say, I was pumped. So I've been able to keep up on the Broncos, but have mercilessly avoided watching the Lions. Oh well, maybe next year.
Sounds the like Anniversary for TO was good. Wish I could have been there.
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...Soooo, a 4th-of-July-like-celebration...in China...with no fireworks.... Are you sure you're really in Beijing and not just making up these blogs on a beach in Hawaii somewhere?
I think when we come over in December, we'll have to bring a much more pleasing delicacy that you can exchange for Moon Cake's and earn yourself some phatty guanxi. I hear they are still enjoyed in the southern portion of this country (and therefore also in the greater Downriver community) and go by the name of "Moon Pies."
So did you go to the animal olympics last week? I think I would be just about as pumped to see that as the Pats/Seahawks game being played in Beijing next summer.
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...Soooo, a 4th-of-July-like-celebration...in China...with no fireworks.... Are you sure you're really in Beijing and not just making up these blogs on a beach in Hawaii somewhere?
The lack of fireworks in Chinatown has been one of the strangest things I've experienced. As in, there aren't any. Even the black market shops don't have them. I heard that several years ago there was a ban on fireworks, but that it was lifted in 2003. So who knows?
And no, we didn't get know about the animal olympics. Your link was the first we'd heard about it.
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Yep, Mooncakes sound like our fruit cakes
The Chinese apparently are smarter than we are. They send us all of their fireworks. Pretty sly!!!
I wonder if the Chinese are as perplexed with our culture as we are with theirs.
Congrats to the basketball team.
Ian and Aubry are back. They have rentd a house in Canyon. She plans to get her teaching certificate and Ian plans to continue his schooling at West Tex.A&M and get his masters. So, I guess we will have them here for awhile. Love, Grandma F.
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Sounds like the Chinese "mooncake" = American "fruitcake". Pass it on and on...Happy Holidays! The Apple Festival is this weekend in New Boston. I doubt I'll see a mooncake, but I'll gladly grab a slice of apple pie. Our One Year Anniversary at TOCC was great. The new building is nearer and nearer to completion. The kids are working on a musical to be presented in December. Well, gotta watch Monday night Football (Eagles and Pack), no sense in watching the 0-4 Lions anymore..FYI your broncs are 2-1.