September 19th 2500

Mooncake Festival

Yesterday was the Chinese Harvest Festival or also better known as the Mooncake festival. We believe the moon on that day is the brightest and biggest in the whole year. Back in Malaysia, younger kids will walk the streets with beautiful decorated (battery operated/candle lit) lantern. When I was young (less than 12 years of age), my parents always buy me the paper made lantern that you light candles inside. We lived in Penang, an island north west of the Peninsular of Malaysia. It was not a village style island. But we held on to our traditional value - a lot. So it was a ritual that between the lunar date of 8-1 to 8-15, we would play with the paper lantern and candles. It was fun and beautiful. We would walk around the dark alley (in group) and see the beautiful and colorful lantern shadow on the ground. Today, this type of lanter is not popularly available in big cities like Kuala Lumpur. We would only see battery operated ones that are made from plastic. The effect of the light bulb is not as intense at the candle with the paper lantern. It is of course safer for younger children to play with because with the candle types, it is easily burnt up due ot mishandling of the lantern. I do miss all those moments back in Penang.

Here is USA, there is nothing like that, well at least locally where I live. They may have small celebration in the chinatown but I am not sure about it and have not heard about it either. Unlike Chinese New Year where they will have a parade on a weekend.

So how did we spend our mooncake festival? We watched The Simpsons! Nothing about mooncake festival on the show though. Well, we didn't even eat mooncake yesterday. Although I do have one lotus double egg yolks left. I bought a box of 4 with different varities - 1 red bean w/ 1 yolk (finished), one red date (given to alan's mom), one nuts (given to alan's dad), and one double yolk white lotus (only had 1/8).