Not too long ago, most people in the world were farmers. They grew their own vegetables and fruits, and raised their own pigs, cows, and chickens for milk, eggs, and meat. Sometimes they had a lot of food and sometimes not enough. But after the fall harvest, families and friends would gather together to give thanks for all they had to eat, for the rain, the sunlight and the earth that made all life possible. In America this holiday is called Thanksgiving. In China, the people celebrate the Autumn Moon Festival.

The Autumn Moon Festival, literally ‘Mid-Autumn Festival’, or the Birthday of the Moon is on the 15Th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, a full moon night. It is a time to have the family together, eat a festive meal including moon cakes, and enjoy the moonlight. Children & adults carry paper lanterns and climb hills to get a good view of the full moon. They give thanks to the bright, silvery moon of the eighth lunar month.

Extracted: http://mid-autumn-fest.blogspot.com/


Celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival as a child, I used to be wildly fond of electric lanterns. These lanterns came in irrelevant shapes, ranging from Hello Kitties to airplanes, and ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS came with a screeching music accompaniment of equally irrelevant songs such as Happy Birthday To You. My hearing must have been somewhat impaired in my childhood, as I always found great joy in trotting around my estate with my flashing lantern, assaulting every one's ears with an almost ultrasonic version of "It's A Small World After All".

Now that I'm older, I begin to realise that it's not so important to have the cutest lantern among all my friends, nor the most deafening. No, what's important is the tradition that we're celebrating, and how it reminds us of who we are and where we come from (China???). And in accordance to tradition, the villagers of old carried paper lanterns to light their way as they climbed the hills to moon-gaze. No villager to my knowledge has trotted up a hill carrying a Power Ranger lantern, with the musical strains of The ABC Song heralding his arrival. So come this Mid-Autumn Festival, I will be carrying a 50cent paper lantern, and spending the evening feeling thankful for my bountiful harvest of fruits and vegetables in the past year. Because if you don't hold on to your roots, commercialisation will sweep it all away, and you'll never get it back.

Wow, look what NTU has done to me.

scribbled
11:04 PM