Happy Mid-autumn Festival!

The Mid-autumn Festival, or nowadays people like to call ‘the Mooncake Festival’, will fall on September 13th, Friday this year. In the lunar calendar, the festival falls on August 15th (八月十五) and it is a time for Chinese people to celebrate family reunion and appreciate the full moon together.

So what are the traditions of this festival? Well, you might already know from the name ‘the Mooncake festival’ that eating mooncakes is a must-have during this time. However, many people today, especially young people, don’t actually enjoy the taste of traditional mooncakes. Many find this traditional snack too sweet and too filling, and one of the traditional flavours, wu ren (5 kernels), is even weirdly salty and more an acquired taste. Hence, a lot of people lean towards the snowy-skin mooncakes that taste more refreshing and have more choices in flavours and fillings. I personally really like the snowy mooncakes because they taste like if mochi ice cream and the traditional lotus paste mooncakes had a baby. The biggest downside of this type of mooncakes is that they are ridiculously expensive. Maybe it’s just the Asian supermarkets in Sydney that have jacked up the prices because I don’t remember gasping when buying snowy mooncakes back in China.

Another tradition worth mentioning is the riddle solving games. This is a fun and educational tradition because in order to solve the riddles, you need knowledge of Chinese culture and Chinese wordplay. In China, some communities or organisations will host a mid-autumn fair or carnival where the riddle solving game is one of the activities and people can play this game to win prices. The riddles are usually tied up with the lanterns which are hung on long strings across a wide space. People are to walk around and suss out which riddles they can solve. Once they figure out the answer, they tear the piece of paper with the riddle on it and hand it together with their answer to the judge. If they get it right, they win a price, usually it’s some useful household items such as tissues and detergent. If they get it wrong, they have to hang the riddle back on the string so the others might have a chance. I just played this game with my students tonight and they loved it! It is a game unique to Chinese!

What are some traditions of the festival you adore?

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