MID – AUTUMN FESTIVAL

Today is the 15th day of the 8th month in the Chinese lunar calendar. It is the day of the traditional Mid – Autumn festival. The festival is actually a full moon festival since every 15th day of the lunar month coincides with the full moon. What makes this full moon festival different from the 11 other full moons is that according to widely held belief, today’s full moon is the most perfect and brightest of them all. Modern day Mid – Autumn festival is unequivocally identified with the mooncake and the dice game but the festival is not the food or the parlor game. The true meaning of the festivity is about reunions or establishing that lost connections that have existed between friends and relatives as well. And for some, it is a time to establish that connection to that special someone whom one is destined to be with. The Mid – Autumn festival has its origins in the prevailing circumstances of a medieval Chinese agrarian society. Around that time, with the improvement of farming technology, surplus labor exists. Many young men would leave their parents, siblings, wife and kids behind to go to the nearby town or a distant city to work for the local magnate or for some aristocrat hoping to earn extra cash for the family. And every year, they return home days before the festival to participate in the autumn harvesting season. Naturally enough, it was a scene of joy and a cause for celebration when somebody gone for several months would be back home bringing bounties with him. Family, relatives, friends and neighbors all come out to greet the returning son and party. It was like thanksgiving cum reunion party; for today, we party and tomorrow we can expect a bountiful harvest. Amid the rancorous celebrations, there are also some who felt sorrow and sadness on the occasion. For when their husband, or son, or relative or friend failed to appear on the appointed day and news about them are forthcoming due to the backward technology then, those people dear to him would felt a shivering incompleteness, which was made more pungent by the celebratory atmosphere around. And so they look up to the full moon, hoping to send a message through it across time and space. Hoping that their love ones are also looking at the moon from the other side far away from home. The poet Li Po summed it up pretty well. “I raised my cup and toast to thee while admiring the beauty that is the moon and I wish that thou would be doing the same, thousands of miles away.” Well, with modern communications, we don’t need the moon to send our longing for one another and reestablish that connection. But what about those sublime connections? The connections that we all subconsciously felt but haven’t had, could we call or email them? We can only look up to the moon and hoped that someone out there is also looking at it at the same time and somehow connect us through across the distance.