Mid-Autumn is a major festival for the Chinese, almost as celebrated as New Year. Families and friends worship the moon, they visit each other and exchange moon cakes, kids walk around with lanterns to replicate the lumination of the moon. But in our family, this is not a festival we have observed. I am not sure why. But I can almost hear my mother say, It's too much bother.
Someone at the table asked, What is the Mid-Autumn Festival in celebration of? No one really seemed to know. But recalling the movies I've seen and stories I've read as a child, I have an association of lanterns, the moon, the milky way, and reunited lovers. This is drawn from my memory as an 8-year-old. I verified a few details with mom, then I told this story to my family, gathered at my table.
Once, there was a cowherd who was taking his cow home at night. He passed by a lake and happened to spy a group of fairy goddesses bathing in the lake. He was in a playful mood, so he stole a set of clothes hanging on the tree nearest him.
When the goddesses finished bathing, they got dressed and flew back up to the sky. Except for one. She couldn't find her clothes. The cowherd came out and returned her clothes. They chatted and fell in love. She decided to stay on earth with the cowherd.
A few years go by, she bore a son. Meanwhile, the Sky King noticed that his daughter was missing. He sent his staff to find her. They report that she's living on earth with a cowherd and had become a mother.
The Sky King was furious. He wanted his daughter back. And besides, goddeses and mortals don't mix. So he went to the cowherd's house and made the goddess go home with him. The goddess and cowherd wept at the parting.
Out of compassion for his daughter and her family, the Sky King allowed them to meet once a year, on the 15th day of the eighth month, when the moon is at its brightest. The harvest moon would guide the lovers to each other. He then cast stars into the sky and built the Milky Way, a bridge that connects earth and heaven. The lovers meet on this bridge once a year.
So the Chinese celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival to mark the finding and reunion of lovers. Girls walk around with a lantern on that night so her true love can find her.
That's the story I told. And evidently, I am a true storyteller. Because that story is a complete lie. Even as I was telling it, something about it didn't seem right. It was too neatly wrapped, too romantic. The Chinese are a practical people with a clumsy oral tradition. Mid-Autumn is almost as big an event as New Year. A public dedication to love and romance? An impractical cultural mindset possible only in a weird screwiness of convenience.
I researched the Mid-Autumn Festival this morning and found a totally different story. A whole new set of memories came flooding back. I confess, the new story I discovered is probably more about the Mid-Autumn Festival than the story I told, because it's about the sun. The moon only featured as an afterthought. Go figure. Only the Chinese would make a big festival of the moon when the story is about the sun.
So what's the real story of the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival? And what's with the story I told in its stead. That'll be tomorrow's post.
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