The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September in the Gregorian calendar), a date that parallels the Autumn Equinox of the solar calendar. This is the ideal time, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest, to celebrate the abundance of the summer's harvest. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different varieties.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar (the other being the Chinese Lunar New Year), and is a legal holiday in several countries. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Traditionally, on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomeloes together (I've included pictures or both a mooncake and pomeloes for your viewing pleasure).
To celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival here in the Philippines we attended a gathering of the Tai Association. The Tai Association is a group of people with the common family name Tai who immigrated from the Fujian province of China to the Philippines. Aimee's family name is Tai. Every year during the Mid-Autumn Festival they gather together to play something called the Dice Game as well as majong. The basic rules of the Dice Game is to get various doubles, three of a kinds, four of a kinds, and straights, using the dice and depending on your roll you win prizes. The game is for fun so the prizes are pretty inexpensive and simple. Each table has a maximum of 15 people and each household cannot have more than one person per table. Because of this Aimee and I played at different tables. 15 people per table, hundreds of Tai so dozens of tables. The game is fast: if you win you quickly collect your prize, pass the dice on and wait for your next turn. The easiest prize to wine is if you roll a the 5 dice and one reads a 4. With a 4 you win a package of 2 fruit cups (I told you the prizes were simple). The grand prize was an electronic pressure cooker. The prizes between the fruit cups and the pressure cooker were cans of Spam (remember, they love Spam here), cans of corned beef (which is pretty much like-Spam), a rice cooker, and a toaster. Each table has the same prizes and you keep rolling dice and passing to the next player until all the prizes are won. 30 minutes later all the prizes were won.
I have to admit, my dice rolling luck was terrible. I only walked away with 4 cans of corned beef (I didn't even win the Spam) and a package of fruit cups. Aimee was lucky, she won fruit cups, corned beef AND Spam Lite!
Mooncake: Typical mooncakes are round or rectangular pastries with a thick filling usually made from lotus paste or sweet bean paste and surrounded by a relatively thin crust. They may contain yolks from salted duck eggs. Mooncakes are rich, heavy, and dense compared with most Western cakes and pastries. They are usually eaten in small wedges accompanied by Chinese tea.
I gave one to my Dad once, he bit into it thinking it would contain western-style filling like cream or berries. My Dad is pretty open to new foods but I've never seen someone gag so quickly after biting into something. I guess it makes sense considering he bit into
it expecting cream and berries and he got a mouthfull of salted duck egg and beans.
Pomelo: It looks like a big grapefruit, it tastes like a big grapefruit, it's estenitally a massive-sized grapefruit!
