My Favorite Chinese Festival The Mid-autumn is my favorite Chinese festival. It always falls on the 15th day of August, but this year is on 29th September. “This wonderful tale is a depiction of a Chinese family coming together and preparing to celebrate the moon with a nighttime picnic that embraces their Chinese customs with glowing lanterns and includes traditional dishes, such as the moon cakes, pomelos, and tea. ”(LIN 94) A few days before the festival, everyone in the family will help to make the house clean and beautiful.
Lanterns will be hung in front of the house. On the evening there will be a big family dinner. People who work far away from their homes will try to come back for the festival. After dinner, people will light the lanterns which are usually red and round. Children will play with their own toy lanterns happily. Then they will sit together to enjoy looking at the moon, the moon is usually round and bright at night. People also can enjoy the moon while eating moon cakes which are the special food for this festival.
There is the background about moon cakes: The legend of the Han Chinese’s uprising against the ruling Mongols at the end to the Yuan dynasty (1280–1368 CE), in which the Han Chinese used traditional moon cakes to conceal the message that they were to rebel on Wu 2 Mid-Autumn Day. (Yang 270) This Festival is also a family holiday. The family members are very happy, because people can look back on the past and look forward to the future together under the beautiful moon.
There also has many wonderful stories about Mid-autumn festival’s moon, I know a story is about love, Hou Yi and his wife Chang’e were forced to separate, Hou Yi on the earth and Chang’e on the moon. They only be allowed can meet once on the Mid-autumn, so that date is very important and precious to them. This story gives people have more expectation, I am a good example like the story. There is a long distance between me and my girlfriend. We met once every 1 year, and most time of my life is missing her. In every Mid-autumn Day, the missing will become more intense. I always felt: No matter East or West, home is best.
As the atmosphere of the autumn is becoming more and more evident, the Mid-autumn festival is coming. The weather is turning cool gradually, and there are big differences of the temperatures between day and night. I even have a little sense of sentiment of autumn, homesick became stronger. The moon on the fifteenth of August of the lunar calendar is roundest in the year, and the day is a time of reunion in Chinese people. As to people who are far away from their homes, they undoubtedly miss their relatives and friends much more on the day. Just like me, I felt so lonely at this year’s Mid-autumn festival.
Because I am in a foreign country, I cannot reunite with my families, lover, only watch the moon alone at here, and recall about something happened at the festival before. Although it is the same moon, but the Wu 3 feeling at home is totally different with here. In my childhood, when the round moon was hanging in the sky at night of the Mid-autumn festival, my father always put a table in the yard. Besides some moon cakes, there were also fruits such as watermelon, apples and grapes on the table. My grandma, mother, father, younger sister and I were around the table enjoying the delicious food, talking and laughing.
Although I was very happy, I felt no more than amused then. Many years later, I was deeply aware how worthwhile it was to cherish. All my loves were around; there was worry in the heart and everything was so peaceful. The moonlight was very gentle and warm, and our family was as whole as the moon then. I remember that when I was in the third grade of the senior high school, we had classes everyday even at weekends, but our school gave us students a day off on the Mid-autumn festival, according to our school, it would be probably rare for us to be together with all the families on the festival.
I didn’t understand clearly the decision of our school at that time. Three years elapsed, and it was really my last Mid-autumn festival that I spent in my hometown. I have been in America for more than two years, and I have my own apartment and study life in this country, but the sense of loneliness comes into my heart from time to time. Walking among the crowds of people, I do not feel as if I belong here. I always cannot help recalling the people and things in my hometown. The fragments of my childhood often occurred to me when I do not expect them.
Wu 4 After a short soothing time, I have to experience a long while of upset. At the night when the moon is round, I particularly miss my relatives and friends in my hometown. Looking up at the moon, I think the moonlight is so dismal that makes me feel greatly empty. I spent one and another moon festival with such a sentimental and worrying mood. The longer I am away from my hometown, the more seriously I am homesick. Although it is the same moon, there are thousands of kilometers away between the people who enjoyed the moon at that time.
People often say that what you are thinking about is what you can see from the moon. When will I sense the pleasure and the satisfaction of reunion instead of the loneliness? Perhaps time will tell me the answer. I hope there is one day as soon as possible that I can stay with my families and lover when the Mid-autumn festival coming. Work Cited LIN, Grace. “Thanking the Moon: Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. ” Library Media Connection. Vol. 29 Issue 4: p94-94. Web. 30. 9. 2012. Yang, Lemei. “China’s Mid-Autumn Day. ” Journal of Folklore Research. Vol. 43 Issue 3(2006): p270-270. Web. 30. 9. 2012.
