The Daynes Family: Mid-Autumn Festival

The Mid-Autumn Festival is a fun Chinese holiday that we used to celebrate in Hong Kong when Sammy was very little. This year we decided to join the masses of Chinese people in Chinatown on the night of the big "lantern walk" when thousands of people light their lanterns and walk the streets.

Here is one of the legends of the Mid-Autumn Festival, or Lantern Festival:

The time of this story is around 2170 B.C. The earth once had ten suns circling over it, each took its turn to illuminate to the earth. But one day all ten suns appeared together, scorching the earth with their heat. The earth was saved by a strong and tyrannical archer Hou Yi. He succeeded in shooting down nine of the suns. One day, Hou Yi stole the elixir of life from a goddess. However his beautiful wife Chang Er drank the elixir of life in order to save the people from her husband's tyrannical rule. After drinking it, she found herself floating and flew to the moon. Hou Yi loved his divinely beautiful wife so much, he didn't shoot down the moon.

We started the night in Chinatown on Smith Street with a delicious dinner from the Noodle Man:

The old man on the moon: There is a saying in Chinese that marriages are made in heaven and prepared on the moon. The man who does the preparing is the old man of the moon (Yueh Lao Yeh). This old man, it is said, keep as a record book with all the names of newborn babies. He is the one heavenly person who knows everyone's future partners, and nobody can fight the decisions written down in his book. He is one reason why the moon is so important in Chinese mythology and especially at the time of the Moon Festival. Everybody including children, hikes up high mountains or hills or onto open beaches to view the moon in the hope that he will grant their wishes.

How Mooncakes Came About:

As the story goes, the Han people of that time resented the Mongol rule of the Yuan Dynasty and revolutionaries, led by Chu Yuan-chang, plotted to usurp the throne. Chu needed to find a way of uniting the people to revolt on the same day without letting the Mongol rulers learn of the plan. Chu's close advisor, Liu Po-wen, finally came up with a brilliant idea. A rumor was spread that a plague was ravaging the land and that only by eating a special mooncake distributed by the revolutionaries could the disaster be prevented. The mooncakes were then distributed only to the Han people, who found, upon cutting the cakes open, the message "Revolt on the fifteenth of the eighth moon." Thus informed, the people rose together on the designated day to overthrow the Yuan, and since that time mooncakes have become an integral part of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Carson loves these little, expensive cakes made mostly from lotus paste with a surprise duck egg in the center. They are really expensive so Mike always brings home the boxes his clients give him for Carson.

Here's Carson & Jack picking out their lanterns. They both chose Angry Birds themed lanterns with a light inside. When you turned on the light it also played a song. We got to "enjoy" those songs over and over again as we walked through Chinatown!