Moon Festival- Mid-Autumn Festival

The moon festival occurs on the 15th of the 8th lunar month. This is a national holiday for the whole 1.3 billion people in China.

The moon festival is one of the most important traditional events for the Chinese. It is a time to celebrate the end of the harvest months and enjoy the wealth that came from it. It is a time for the Chinese people to travel and come together with their families. This is very similar to our Thanksgiving celebrations. Families enjoy big meals together, then at night everyone will go outside to admire the full moon. If a person is not able to be with their family it is understood that they will be watching the moon at the same time, thinking about their family and friends.

I will be thinking about all of you and wishing you all the best as I gaze up at the full moon this week!

Our landlords brought us some traditional moon cakes. There are a number of different flavors of moon cakes you can get. I like to call this one, strange, yucky, green, waxy stuff. It was a very sweet gesture but it is not a favorite for many westerners. I guess you could compare it to the fruit cake people give during Christmas time. Our school made a cheese cake for each of the employees to enjoy in celebration of the festival. I think the writting says Happy Mid-Autumn festival????

For our week off of school I joined two other new teachers at my school Mike & Erin and their cousin Rob (visiting for the week from California) to Huang Shan: Yellow Mountain.