The Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋節

The Mid-Autumn Festival {中秋節, zhōng qiū jié}; also known as Mooncake or Lantern Festival in Malaysia.

Reminiscing my younger days, how we (my siblings and I) had waited anxiously for my mother to say ... "lets go buy lantern!". Some lean years, we just had to invent our own designss using metal wires and coloured cellophane papers. Mine had always been the worst ~ totally shapeless :)

The chance to play with matches to light our candles for the lantern and the parading in our "kampungs" with drums were the highlight of this festival.

The drums beating and the racket we made were needed to call out the moon and eating of the mooncakes were secondary though its enjoyable as well.

But, sad to say, nowadays these traditions are getting very commercialised and producers of mooncakes are racking in millions of dollars especially in China, Mid-autumn festival is a big deal and big business.

Last night, my sister-in-law and I went looking for lantern for her 4-year old son and instead of the famous "animal" shape, we were shopping for famous "cartoon" characters instead. Imagine how tradition evolved....

My grandmother's version of the legendary beautiful goddess named Chang'e who drank the exilir herself to beat the evil husband, HouYi to the portion, so that he will not be immortal and so save the land from his planned eternal evil rule.

After drinking the exilir, she was lifted by mysterious hands in exile to the moon where she lives forever. In honour of her sacrifice, the people of her land started offering mooncakes to pray to the moon for putting an end to their miseries.