Mid-Autumn Festival

Not that I want to continue to blog about the kids, but most of you readers are friends and family and this is the best way to keep everyone updated. Emmy is doing well, her cut is healing I am not sure how much will scar, will keep you posted. The Chinese Virus factory AKA our home continues to be quite productive. To make it short this time we had a body ache, headache and fever virus. It started with Emmy, then me followed by Anderson and Jackson. The boys have missed the last two days of school and tomorrow is a holiday. Yes, Wednesday, the middle of the week is national holiday to celebrate the Mid-Autumn festival also known as the moon festival.

"Celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival is strongly associated with the legend of Houyi and Chang'e, the Moon Goddess of Immortality. Tradition places these two figures from Chinese mythology around 2170 BCE, during the reign of the legendary Emperor Yao, shortly after that of Huangdi. Unlike many lunar deities in other cultures who personify the moon, Chang'e simply lives on the moon but is not the moon per se." (taken from wikepedia, click on the blog title for a link to the article)

So essentially it is a harvest festival, celebrating the harvest moon. Which we have been learning about in second grade as JP is keeping a moon log. The moon festival is rich with tradition and folklore. All over Pudong, there are lanterns and moons and rabbits. The stores are selling the traditional mooncake. The mooncake seems to be a very important part of the celebration. Tonight and tomorrow families will be together to have dinner and eat mooncake. I find the mooncake an interesting thing. Today at the store I saw people loading their carts with the mooncake. There is even some moon cake scalping going on. So Haagen Daz sells a fancy collection of mooncake. How it works is you buy a coupon that can be redeemed for the moon cake. Now outside of haagen dazs are guys selling the coupons, but I think you can also sell your coupon for cash less than the face value. This way, the worker who may have received the moon cake from there employer can get cash and the buyer gets his moon cake cheaper. Some of the dudes were even hanging out in the Haagen Dazs. It is a totally expected practice. I wonder if creating the market sells more mooncake. Got to love China!

The official working holiday is to have Wed-Friday off, then the Chinese are expected to go back to work on Sat and Sunday to make up for the extra 2 days off. Now that seems uncool, but overall, people in China want to work. My Ayi is coming on the official holiday because she wants the overtime. Our driver left early today to have dinner with his family and is coming in all of the days for the same benefit.

So I did sample the mooncake. It wasn't that bad. Mine was sweet with a coconut flavor with a doughy crust. I kind of reminds me of a fig newton that isn't as crumbly. Well happy Autumn to all. By the next post I will be one year older, but a lot wiser.