Moon Festival
By Regina Huang, Special Contributor

“What is that?” my friends asked, as I took a bite of a quarter piece of diagonally sliced mooncake.

As I explained that it was a traditional Chinese sweet, almost like a pastry, one of my sisters chimed in with, “There are a lot of different fillings but this one’s filled with red bean paste and has an egg yolk in the middle that stands for the moon.”

This only confused my friends more and before I knew it, I was telling my friends the stories of the Chinese Moon Festival and about mooncake, as told to me by my family.

One legend tells the story of “the lady living in the moon.” According to legend, there was a day when 10 suns appeared in the sky. The emperor ordered a famous archer, Hou Yi, to shoot down the extra nine suns that were making the Earth too hot. When Hou Yi succeeded, the Goddess of Western Heaven rewarded the archer with a pill that would make him immortal. Hou Yi’s beautiful wife, Chang Er, found the pill, took it, and was banished to the moon as punishment. It is on the day of the Moon Festival that she is most beautiful, and the moon is at its brightest for the year.

Another legend deals with the history of China, specifically the overthrow of Mongol rule in the 14th century. Knowing that the Moon Festival was approaching, the leaders of the revolution believed mooncakes were the most efficient way to spread plans for the attack. The Chinese rebels attacked on the night of the Moon Festival and succeeded.

My family members have told these legends to me countless times as they tried to instill my culture into my life as an Asian American.

Although my friends had seen it for the first time, mooncake is something my family and I eat every year during the Moon Festival. In fact, mooncake is so popular during this holiday that The Moon Festival is also known as the Mooncake Festival. In Chinese, this day is called zhong qui jie, or the Mid-Autumn Festival. While this holiday dates back to the 7th century Tang Dynasty, it still has influence on modern day Chinese.

In modern times, Chinese businesspeople give presents to show appreciation on this day, the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar. It is also a day when people expect to receive bonuses from their companies. The Chinese celebrate this important holiday with dances, moon gazing, storytelling, and eating—largely mooncakes. The most popular dances are the dragon and lion dance. The dragon dance is supposed to prevent sickness and disease whereas the lion dance, originally used to confuse and scare away evil spirits, is now danced as a form of entertainment. The “lion” dances to a drum, gong, and cymbal and brings good luck and fortune to all. Storytelling usually revolves around stories of mooncake and how it came to be.

Mooncake is typically the size of one’s palm and is heavy and filling. They’re usually filled with lotus seed, red bean, black bean, or mung bean paste. Sometimes though, they are filled with fruits, nuts, or meats. Traditionally, mooncakes contain one egg yolk while others contain four, representing the full moon or the four phases of the moon respectively.

My friend, Steve Chang, described the importance of mooncake as he said, “Have you heard that if people are far away from each other, they can eat mooncake and look at the moon, and it brings them together? That’s what I do because I go to school so far away from home (in Kansas). So I guess it comforts us and brings us together.”

In that sense, mooncake is like comfort food. It’s what brings us together on days like the Moon Festival.