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Coming home after a 2-week long vacation is a hard thing to do. There are chores scrambling for my attention – fridges (we have two) needing to be stocked; sheets that need washing, meals to be cooked, floors begging to be vacuumed and kids to scrub to a school-shine clean before returning to their teachers and peers. The thought of facing them sapped all that bouncy Floridian warmth I’d generated during those 14 days when lo and behold, what did I find in my mail box? Nestled amidst junk mail for tractor equipment and lawn fertilizers (is it obvious that we live in the country?) and stacked bills, was a nondescript USPS postbox. Slicing it open, out spilled 4 darling accordion paper lanterns -- each a different colour; 4 ‘pigs-in-a-basket’ (a Chinese pastry only available and eaten during the Mooncake Festival); a boxful of Indonesian-made plastic bubbles with fumes that makes one just a little heady, and a card from the fairy godmother herself – Wendy -- a friend from my secondary school days who I’d recently gotten reacquainted since our meeting in Singapore last year. Soft-spoken, gentle and a mother of 4 home-schooled children, small-town Ohio-living (but still bigger than Corning), mind-reading Wendy, who'd pin-pointed what I’d been missing this season.
Around September or October yearly, was when my Aunts paid homage to my Mom. It was the time when they would come knocking at our gate in Singapore, bearing packages of mooncakes – preferably double yolk – proof that she was valued and loved. My sisters and I would fight over the yolks. I would nibble all the baked soft brown crust, carefully evading the gummy lotus paste middle that more annoyingly, stuck to the roof of my mouth and then, relish the slightly salty yolk. Perhaps, I fed my dog the uneaten lotus portion, but I digress, let's not incriminate myself any further.
Mooncakes were not exactly my thing but what I loved most about the festival were the lanterns. Back then, my Dad would indulge us with our choice of cellophane-made lanterns, usually in shapes of the Chinese zodiac signs. It was the highlight for us kids, especially made more precious when we gathered with our cousins, gingerly holding our candle-lit lanterns -- trying hard not to be distracted by their more elaborate and larger lanterns -- whilst circling my parent’s front lawn. Unfortunately, the cellophane ones were delicate and often melted after one use or a hole would emerge having come too close to the cellophane walls rendering it trash material after one night of "rowdy" display.
Modern day ones have erased nostalgic inefficiencies and now children can manhandle the sterile, tacky plastic molded, battery-operated with screeching pop tunes -- for ever and ever (another friend said she’d bought one with the tune “Lambada” in it and had to dismantle the sound piece) -- or until Mom comes along and throws it out with the other dysfunctional plastic toys.
Being so far away from Singapore makes festivals that I’ve grown up with tons more charming. That coupled by the fact that I wish the same warm fuzzy memories of my childhood growing Singaporean-Chinese, be passed on to my children. I don’t make claims that I know much about all the festivals that I’ve heeded as a pudgy child. I know them as well as what a westerner would understand a plate of Chinese stir-fry – it is Chinese food....stir-fried.
So, even today, as I’m gorging myself with double yolk mooncakes with lotus paste celebrating Mooncake festival with some panache, I have a hazy idea of the true meaning of the festival armed with no more than my primary 5 Chinese textbook memory of a fair Chinese maiden and a rabbit stuck in a moon. Yes, you read right --in the moon. They weren’t the first Chinese astronauts nor did she bring thumper along for the ride. The original message was, however, lost in translation and over time on me.
As it turns out, Wikipedia has saved me from dragging my family name into the ditch and I’m now educated enough to know that the proper term for the popular name of Mooncake festival – in Singapore – is really the mid-autumn festival. It had to do with the farmers in China celebrating the harvest and enjoying the fullness of the glowing, rotund moon whilst stuffing their faces with cakes (mooncakes) and pomelos. The legend of the fair maiden, Chang’e and the Jade rabbit in the moon, is far more convoluted and less Disney happy-ending-esque, but in true stoic Confucius style, is more about sacrifices and kindness.
But, my kids don’t have to be well-versed with Wikipedia’s version of the why’s and how’s of Mooncake festival. I didn’t, and I’m not scarred by my ignorance. So, that’s why Aunty Wendy’s gift to them is all the more precious. She’s simply continuing the tradition our parents have bestowed on to us for years, or until we became too gawky and pimply to bother with holding a lit lantern -- in fear it would cast further light on our blemishes. She is giving them the same delight I had when my Dad bought me my first dragon-shaped cellophane lantern, and when I tried to embrace the thinly-made lantern in my gleeful short arms.
And to that act of kindness and sacrifice on Aunty Wendy’s part, I wish you all Zhong qiu jie kuai le! (translated: Happy mid-Autum festival people!)
lol!!! we all went to wikipedia because every single chinese person i know had mixed up the legends in an attempt to remember how the rabbit got in the moon and what it had to do with mooncakes. Fyi - mooncakes were not dumped into the river (that was dumplings), chang'e did not meet her boyfriend each year across the milky way (that was the weaving maiden).
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