Moon Cakes

This past weekend was the Mid-Autumn Festival, a Chinese holiday celebrating the harvest moon. It is recognized as a national holiday, so there was no school for us on Thursday and Friday. The moon was full on Thursday night, and this was when most of the activities took place. There were lots of fire crackers around dusk, and many people gathered outside to view the moon soon afterward. Luckily the sky was clear, so the moon was brilliant. From what I understand, there is a small story behind the celebration: long ago a dog bit the moon and made it a crescent, but then a magic girl traveled through space to make it full again. (At least, that’s what I gathered from a small performance we went to Thursday night).

One tradition during the Mid-Autumn Festival is to eat a desert called a Moon Cake. There were many of these cakes for sale during the days before the holiday, so I decided to get one to try myself on Thursday night. It tasted good, kind of like a donut with raisin mush inside.

There is another holiday coming up next week on October 1^st. It’s called National Day, and is the equivalent of our 4^th of July. We get a whole week of school off to celebrate.