Mid-Autumn Moon Festival

Festival Location: Taipei, Taiwan

Festival Type(s): Lunar Events | Full Moon Parties, Traditional Festivals

Mid-Autumn Moon Festival Media:

Mid-Autumn Moon Festival

By: © Joshua Hartshorne 2009

Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is one of the more important holidays on the Chinese calendar. I'd heard of it at in college, but didn't really know anything about it, other than looking at the moon was important. In 2003, my Taiwan-born fiancée, Helen, and I had a small party at her apartment, to which we invited a few friends. We were able to get out on to the roof of the building and look at the moon. Good thing it's not Mid-Autumn Star Festival; you can't see many of those in Washington, D.C..... or in Taipei, either.

The best part of the festival is the moon cakes -- very rich pastries, usually with an egg yolk inside -- though this is a controversial position, as some compare them to Christmas fruitcakes, and seem to be detested in the same way many Jews hate matzah (the unleavened bread of Passover). Still, it's a pretty big business and you have to get them well in advance, as stores run out. As with anything else, there are the "in" sellers, which are particularly hard to get a shipment from. Everybody is getting into the act. Hagen Daas has an ice cream version.

So I had some experience with Mid-Autumn Moon before coming to Taiwan, but still I was pretty excited about seeing "the real thing." It happened that Confucius's birthday coincided with the festival this last year, and I had read in the Lonely Planet that that is *the* time to go to a Confucian temple. Animal sacrifice is still central to the ceremony.

In fact, it is so much *the* time that you need tickets. Our school had a few tickets, for which Helen and I signed up. Unfortunately, they didn't have enough, but we were told if we got in line by 4 in the morning or so, we might be able to get in.

We passed on that one, especially when we saw that they were forecasting rain.

When we got woke up -- long after 4 am -- we found that it wasn't raining after all. Along with most people, we had the day off, so we went to a show of highlights from Chinese opera. It took place in a theater in the Botanical Gardens, where there is supposed to be a fantastic tea garden. Helen and I wandered around the gardens, but never found the tea garden. The lotus pond had just finished blooming, though there was still one blossom left.

Afterwards, we had a late lunch (lunner) and then went to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Plaza, where there was supposed to be some sort of light and acrobatics show. The plaza is big, and we weren't exactly sure where it was supposed to be. There were a fair number of people milling about the plaza, including lots of families with little kids.

Helen and I have trouble believing that there is a serious baby shortage in Taiwan, as reported, since we see kids *everywhere*. The reason is probably that in America, the kids would be off playing soccer or in daycare or doing whatever. In Taipei, where everyone lives in very small apartments, they tend to go out in groups to hang out in public spaces, such as malls, plazas, etc.

We found that they were projecting some sort of moving image onto the CKS Memorial building itself. It was sort of like a moving tapestry of not especially interesting images. We figured that must be sort of like a screen-saver; something to watch until the show began. We chatted, watched the kids, watched the projection, waited, waited. It was soon long after when the show was supposed to begin. All the while, they were playing the same rendition of "Yue liang dai biao wo di xin" The moon over and over and over again. I like this song, and I was learning to play it on the guitar, but I was starting to get worried if I heard it any more I'd never want to hear it again.

It's a very popular song during Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, as it is ostensibly related to moons (the title translates as something like "the moon shows you my love" -- I don't know what all the words mean so I can't say exactly).

Finally, we decided to go ask the people at the projector when the show was going to begin. It turned out that this projection was something else entirely. The show we had come for had been cancelled in anticipation of the non-existant rain. They happily told us about their show, which was based on "American technology." As far as we could tell, it was a projected screen-saver, but they seemed pretty excited about it.

The acrobatics show had been rescheduled for another weekend. When that weekend rolled around, it actually did rain. If it was rescheduled again, Helen and I don't know.

So what are people supposed to do on Mid-Autumn Moon Festival? They're supposed to spend time with their family. And look at the moon. We saw lots of the moon, but the family was harder to come by. Big Chinese holidays - at least as celebrated in Taiwan - are still mostly about family. This makes them hard to experience as an outsider, but it is an experience nonetheless.

by Joshua Hartshorne

Mid-Autumn Moon Festival Photos: