My peaceful days of childhood were marked by a series of festivals that I would look forward to.

One of my favourite Chinese festivals is the Mid-Autumn Festival. It’s one of the largest festivals celebrated by Chinese the world over, and best part was that it could stretch to two whole weeks!

The origins of mooncakes

To begin this wonderful festival of mystery and stories, there’s a patriotic, if not bloody, tale of the origin of mooncakes that happened during the time of the Mongolian invasions.

China were under Mongolian rule (1280-1376) during the Yuan dynasty. Under oppression by the Mongolians, the peasants of a town organised a coup using notes hidden in round pastries that they ate in autumn.

The note said to kill the Mongolians during Mid-Autumn. The pastries were freely distributed to all in town and on Mid-Autumn night, the entire town took up arms and managed to successfully overthrow the Mongolians.

So to this day, mooncakes continue to be eaten in celebration of this victory.

Candlelight replaces ghost lights

The first step to celebrating Mid-Autumn (for children, at least) is to pick out a really cool lantern. Once the Seventh Lunar Month, also known as the Hungry Ghost Month, is over, shops will start displaying beautifully coloured lanterns.

The traditional lanterns are made from either paper (folded to look like an accordion, see left, picture by Eugene Han) or coloured cellophane and are lit with candles.

Alternatively, some children opt for battery-operated plastic lanterns that beep horrid songs when lit. If you opt for a paper lantern, be sure to get an extra one in case it catches fire.

Once you get the lantern home, it’s time to organise the neighbourhood kids. The earlier you get this done, the more days you  get to carry your lantern. During my younger days, I was a great lantern parade organiser and so I could get one to two whole weeks of lantern carrying with the apartment kids. Each day at nightfall, the lot of us in the neighbourhood had great fun holding lantern parades or adventuring into the dark gardens and alleyways in our apartment compound.

Mooncake shopping

The next step is mooncake shopping. Gift-giving is a long-standing tradition during the Mid-Autumn Festival. The younger generation will usually buy boxes of mooncakes for elderly relatives. You can tell how massive this business is when you go shopping as most malls have event halls filled with mooncake brands ranging from old traditional shops to Malaysian suppliers to five-star hotels.

Mooncake is a rich traditional dessert with a ‘snow’ skin (made from glutinous rice flour) or pastry skin filled with lotus paste and sometimes with a whole salted egg yolk inside. There are many modern varieties today ranging from truffle filling to ice-cream and durian. If you’re planning on buying mooncakes, don’t forget to buy the little baked piggies or fishes (made from the same pastry skin as mooncakes) in tiny ‘baskets’ for the children. Do a little window-shopping before you decide on what to get, but be sure to not wait too long as they sell out really fast!

Mid-Autumn Day

On the night of Mid-Autumn, many will return at their parents’ home to have a dinner followed by a get-together with snacks like mooncakes and pomelos being served. The moon is reputed to be exceptionally bright on Mid-Autumn so non lantern-carrying kids will be staring wistfully at the moon trying to make out the shape of Chang’e, the Jade Rabbit and the Woodcutter on the Moon.

Legends of these three mystical moon beings are widely told during and before Mid-Autumn and makes for great story-telling which gives Mid-Autumn much of its charm and mystery. Here’s a summarised version of the three legendary figures on the moon.

The legend of Chang’ e

There are many versions of the tragic tale of Houyi and Chang’e (see left, pictue courtesy of Project Gutenberg eText 15250). This young couple lived about 4,000 years ago in China. (Some sources say they used to live in the heavenly palace before being banished to earth). Legend has it that there were ten suns on the earth which took turns to ride their chariots across the sky. One fateful day, all ten suns gathered together to ride the skies and scorched the whole earth. Emperor Yao, the emperor of China, ordered his champion marksman Houyi to shoot the suns down from the sky.

Houyi successfully shot down nine of the suns leaving the one we see in the sky today. As a reward, the emperor bestowed him with a pill of immortality warning him to take only half the potent pill. Unfortunately, Chang’e, his wife found the pill one day and swallowed it whole – some say inadvertently, others say in greed and still more said that Chang’e swallowed it to stop Houyi’s enemies from robbing it. Another version had Houyi eventually succeeding the throne, turning tyrant and making the pill of immortality himself by sacrificing a young boy a day for a hundred days. To stop Houyi from continuing his cruel acts, Chang’e stole and ate the pill.

Once she took the pill, her whole body became very light and she floated into the sky and landed on the moon. Another romantic twist cites Houyi as gaining immortality and living on the sun; and each Mid Autumn, he would go to the moon to visit Chang’e.

The legend of the Jade Rabbit

Another popular legend involves the Jade Rabbit on the moon. This rabbit lives an illustrious life and pounds away making elixirs for the immortals every day. He gained immortality when he sacrificed himself to a fire to feed an old man and hence touched the gods. The Jade Rabbit is also featured as a minor character in many other Chinese mythologies.

A Jade Rabbit lantern (pictue by Eugene Han)

The legend of the Woodcutter

The name of the woodcutter on the moon is Wu Gang. In many different variations of the tale, he was an ordinary man characterised by his lack of determination.  In one, he was learning the skills to become an immortal and gave up after mere days. In another legend, he incurred the wrath of the Jade Emperor with his laziness. Regardless, he was sent to the moon as punishment and was told he can only return or gain immortality if he could chop down the tree on the moon. He is still chopping away today at that magic self-healing tree.