Friday October 2, 2009
Moon struck
By MARJORIE CHIEW
It’s time to savour mooncakes while sipping Chinese tea and telling moon tales.
THIS year’s Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as Mooncake or Lantern Festival, will be celebrated tomorrow.
It is a celebration of abundance and togetherness and dates back over 3,000 years to moon worship in China’s Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC).
The festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, when the moon is at its fullest and roundest.
For the Chinese, it is another excuse to indulge in feasting and merry-making.
Delectable: Mooncakes, together with tea, serve as a sweet ending to a meal. Mooncakes, together with tea, serve as a sweet ending to a meal and are best savoured while staring at the moon and children traipse around the neighbourhood parading their lanterns of many shapes.
According to Datuk David Hew, co-founder of Visiber Sdn Bhd which offers a service to help people make life decisions using a numbers-based methodology: “With fine weather, people can worship the moon today, from 11pm to 1am, or tomorrow, from 9pm to 11pm.
The Chinese believe in praying to the moon deity for protection, family unity and good fortune.
“Mid-Autumn Day is also the birthday of the Earth God (Tu-di Kung).
" This festival signifies that the year’s hard work in the fields will soon come to an end. Since fruits, vegetables and grains have been harvested by this time, food is abundant.
"With only the harvest left to attend to, it is a time for relaxation and celebration.
Pomeloes are a common offering to the Moon Goddess because the fruit is symbolic of abundance, prosperity and having children " People express their gratitude to heaven (represented by the moon) and earth (symbolised by the Earth God) for the blessings they have enjoyed over the past year, much like Thanksgiving Day in the West,” he says.
Traditionally, food offerings were placed on an altar set up in a courtyard bathed in silver moonlight, says Hew.
Apples, pears, peaches, grapes, red jujubes, plums, pomegranates, melons cut in the shape of a lotus flower, oranges and pomeloes (sweet Chinese grapefruits) might be seen.
Special foods for the festival include mooncakes, steamed sponge cakes (fatt koh), cooked taro, edible snails from the taro patches or rice paddies cooked with sweet basil, and water caltrop (leng kok), a type of water chestnut resembling black buffalo horns.
Pomeloes are a common offering because the Chinese word for this fruit (you zi) sounds like the word for “to have”, which also refers to abundance, prosperity and having children.
Soldiers in the Ming Dynasty used water caltrop, a type of aquatic plant, to ward off starvation, so it symbolises perseverance in one’s life.
Mooncakes, delicious little round cakes with various fillings such as sweet bean paste, lotus seed paste, sugared melon and duck yolk (round as the golden moon), symbolise heavenly blessings of longevity and good health.
Traditionally, 13 mooncakes were piled in a pyramid to symbolise the 13 moons of a “complete year”.
During the festival, people eat mooncakes to express their homesickness and love for their families, and their hope for a bumper harvest and a happy life, as the mooncake symbolises the family reunion.
In the past, under the bright moon, says Hew, a portrait of the Moon Goddess was put on a table, facing the moon, and red candles were lit.
Then the family members paid homage to the moon, praying for family reunion and safety.
In China, plates of “round” fruit are offered; the shape of the fruit symbolises the fullness of the moon and family harmony. Pears are excluded because the word pear (li) sounds like the word for “separation” and thus, deemed inauspicious.
Mirror-and-moon ritual
On this festival night, women offer fruit, including pomeloes, mooncakes and tea, and pray to the Moon Goddess, Chang’e, to find husbands. A bronze mirror is also prepared for the occasion.
“To find their soul mates, they need to capture the reflection of the moon in the mirror.
"They then make their wish and pray to gain a partner or companion, and glimpse at the mirror again. The mirror is then wrapped in a red cloth or a piece of red paper and placed under their pillow or bed,” says Dr Wilson Yong, metaphysics researcher and founder of International Metaphysic Research Association.
“Some women believe that this ritual can help them find a companion easily. This ritual is still practised in countries such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia.”
As for the nuptials, a tale less heard concerns the Mid-Autumn ceremony of the Tanka, a minority people in southern China. According to their tradition for newlyweds, a toad and a hare are placed underneath a cinnamon tree outside the bridal bedroom.
An old woman in the role of the Queen Mother of the West, Xi Wang Mu offers cinnamon cakes and marital advice.
Standing in the moonlight, the bride and groom are presented to their families. The ritual concludes when the newlyweds enter the bridal chamber, also called the Moon Palace. The bridal bed is called the Toad Palace.
Legends of the Moon Festival
An oft-heard folk legend is how autumn mooncakes were the means to overthrow the foreigners, the Mongols, during the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368).
Details of the revolution were hidden inside the mooncakes, which were then sent to friends and relatives at festival time in the year 1353.
The secret plan of a massacre of the Mongols led by Liu Bowen, intrepid counsellor to the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty, resulted in the capture of an important prefecture, which hastened the downfall of the dynasty.
Another legend concerns Houyi, the Divine Archer, whose beautiful wife was the lunar deity Chang’e.
One of the many versions of the story is the popular folklore that tells of how Houyi became a great hero because he shot down nine out of 10 suns, which caused much suffering to mankind.
But he was banished to Earth to be a mortal because of divine wrath.
One day, unable to bear the thought of dying, Houyi travelled to the palace of Xi Wang Mu in the Kunlun Mountains to seek her elixir of immortality for him and his wife.
In exchange, she asked Houyi, a skilled architect, to build her a summer palace.
While he was out hunting for months, his wife found the elixirs and drank them, out of curiosity.
When Houyi returned, he found his wife ascending to the moon. Chang’e gained immortality and would live forever alone on the moon with only white hares accompanying her.
Chinese folklore states that the inhabitants on the moon are the Moon Goddess who lives in the Moon Palace, the Jade Rabbit pounding the elixir of immortality, the Woodcutter and a three-legged toad.
The arrival of the Mooncake Festival heralds the ending of yet another year.
There is a Chinese saying that the moon fears the 15th and the year fears the Mid-Autumn Festival.
This is to say that when the 15th day arrives, the month will soon be over and after the festival, the year will soon end.
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