This year 4th
of October is the celebration of Mid-Autumn Festival. Mid-Autumn Festival (Moon
Festival) is a harvest festival celebrated by ethnic Chinese, Korean, and
Vietnamese people. The festival is held on the 15th day of the 8th month of the
lunar calendar with full moon at night. Mid-Autumn Festival is a time of
thanksgiving, gathering and praying. During this day, relatives will come over
to meet up, eat mooncake and drink tea. On the other hand children, will be
playing with lanterns, or also known as “tang long”. However, this year I
wasn’t able to celebrate it with my family, so I celebrated it with my
roommates. We all had mooncake and tea during that night. It was a different
experience which is worth remembering.
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| Mooncake and Tea |
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| Eating Mooncake |
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| Yeow cutting the mooncake with a ruler. Mr Perfectionist |
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| Eswaran playing with the Mooncake |
When I was
still a lad, my grandmother would tell me the story of Chang Er, the Moon
Goddess, whom we pray to her during this day. The story goes like this,
In the
ancient past, there was a hero named Hou Yi who was excellent at archery. His
wife was Chang'e. One year, the ten suns rose in the sky together, causing
great disaster to people. Yi shot down nine of the suns and left only one to
provide light. An immortal admired Yi and sent him the elixir of immortality.
Yi did not want to leave Chang'e and be immortal without her, so he let Chang'e
keep the elixir. But Peng Meng, one of his apprentices, knew this secret. So,
on the fifteenth of August in the lunar calendar, when Yi went hunting, Peng
Meng broke into Yi's house and forced Chang'e to give the elixir to him.
Chang'e refused to do so. Instead, she swallowed it and flew into the sky.
Since she loved very much her husband and hoped to live nearby, she chose the
moon for her residence. When Yi came back and learned what had happened, he
felt so sad that he displayed the fruits and cakes Chang'e liked in the yard
and gave sacrifices to his wife. People soon learned about these activities,
and since they also were sympathetic to Chang'e they participated in these
sacrifices with Yi.
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Chang'e the Moon Goddess
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source of legend and picture- wikipedia
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