Moon Festival

Taiwanese people celebrate a multitude of fascinating Chinese holidays. I have been here for Chinese New Year, Tomb Sweeping Day, Chinese Valentines Day, Ghost Month, birthdays of various gods, and now Moon Festival. These holidays follow the lunar calendar, which nobody can explain to me. I don’t think anyone knows how to calculate when the holiday is coming; word just gets out somehow. Moon Festival is on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, or Sept. 14 this year. The parties start a week in advance, and may go on afterwards if the weather doesn’t cooperate in time.


Moon Festival is celebrated by eating a lot of barbecue, as well as moon cakes and pomelos. The actual grill is not like a western barbecue at all. I went to a Moon Fest barbecue for work the other weekend, and learned how it is done. First, you get some big charcoal sticks and bash them up with a hammer or any other tool. Then you put all the charcoal bits into a little metal pan with legs. This is the barbecue. It sits on the ground with a little fire built inside, and you cook on top of a wire grill. This device is less than a foot tall. It’s not very macho, but it sure seems portable – and I enjoy that in a food preparation method.


Moon cakes are also involved in traditional celebrations. There are many styles of moon cakes, and I’m not sure which is the real deal. My employer gave me a box and told me that it must be kept frozen. Inside were four “cakes” made of a fluffy type of ice cream on top of a thin layer of cake, all wrapped up in sheets of rice dough. Each of the four cakes had a different surprise inside. One had cherries, one had orange, and one had sweet potato. I haven’t eaten the fourth yet.
Then, another day at work, I was told to try a moon cake. They told me to hurry because it was still hot. Hot is good in this style of moon cake I guess. It was a small flaky ball covered with poppy seeds, or lotus seeds. Inside was black seed paste. Then, there was a surprise in the middle – a super hard egg yolk. I pretended to eat the flaky pastry over the garbage bin to avoid a mess, but I really had to chuck that yolk.

Moon cakes also have some historical significance. It is said that during the 14^th Century, Ming revolutionaries otherthrew the Mongolian rulers in China using moon cakes. Mongolians don’t eat moon cakes, so only the Chinese read the messages hidden inside. The message was to revolt on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month.

The last must-eat Moon Fest food is pomelo. I had to teach this word to students, yet I hade never seen one before. Anyways, it’s a big pear-shaped fruit with a thick green skin that you peel off like an orange. The fruit inside is round and clear, but in big slices like a grapefruit. It’s not very tasty and a little bitter, but you can cut the green skin into a pomelo hat. Pomelo hats are beloved around here, but it just looks like you went digging in the trash and got fruit scraps on your head.

The moon is at its biggest and fullest during Moon Festival, so you are supposed to look at the moon. But there is a lot of light pollution in and around the cities, plus lots of clouds and smog, and there was a typhoon this year. So I think moon gazing is optional.

During the work barbecue, I asked my boss Molly to tell me the story of Moon Festival. Here’s how it went:

“A long time ago there was an emperor. He was not a good king, but he had a beautiful wife named Chang’e. He wanted to live forever, but he was not a good king to the people. So his wife took the medicine and went to the moon. She will live on the moon forever. There is also something about 10 burning suns, but I don’t remember.”

I did a little browsing online to crack the case, and found out that nobody agrees on the exact story. It’s not even agreed whether the emperor was good or bad. But I will provide another butchered version of the story to complement Molly’s.

“Ahem. Gather around children. Gather, I said. Gather means come here! A long time ago there was a man named Houyi. He was a very good archer. In fact, he was the emperor’s best archer. This was so long ago that the earth had 10 suns. One day, the suns all circled together and the earth started to burn. The emperor sent Houyi to shoot down all but one sun. Houyi was a hero and became emperor. Everyone doted on him so much that he became very self-superior, and wanted to live forever. His advisors found a way for him to live forever; it was a pill made out of 100 dead schoolboys. Each night for 100 nights he ground up a schoolboy for his pill. Houyi’s beautiful wife Chang’e couldn’t let her tyrannical husband rule the world forever, so she stole the pill. She took the pill and floated to the moon. She is still there today with the jade rabbit. Chang’e and the jade rabbit pound medicines for the gods. So… don’t do drugs kids.”

Happy Moon Festival! I will post some pictures and hopefully some video soon.