moon festival!
Saturday night was the night of the Moon Festival!
This is a harvest celebration, celebrated in China & other parts of Asia, in the fall, when there is a full harvest moon…
Families get together to look at the full moon, eat colorful fruit, & share delicious moon cakes, made with red or black bean paste, lotus seed paste, or other fillings, & surrounded by a flaky pastry. Sometimes, the moon cakes will have an egg yolk baked inside, to represent the full moon…
…and here is a good luck piggy-shaped cake, filled with lotus seed paste!
On our way to Earth for the very first time, when it was just LB & me, I got a bit lost trying to locate this Solar System, & was running late…By the time we had arrived here, the Earth was in total darkness on the side where my Elders had instructed me to land, in the Americas…
…so, instead, we first stopped off on the very opposite side of the Earth, where it was bright & sunny daylight, in Guangzhou (Canton), China! We were very, very tired, since it was our first time on this journey alone, & the first time always seems much longer. From the sky, I finally spotted a park with a cool, blue-green lake. Right next to the park was a long, low stone building with a broad & shady windowsill, which is where we landed…
Always explorative, LB peeked into the window, & then called me. Working at long, wooden tables, we saw many, many young women forming moon cakes by hand. Some of the ladies were rolling out the dough, & others were pressing the cakes into forms & filling the cakes with red bean paste…
We had landed on the windowsill of a moon cake company! The windows to the kitchen were open, and one of the young ladies inside spotted us & offered us some red bean paste to try–I think she could tell we were a little hungry. She said her name was Yanjun.
Yanjun was the first Earth woman we had ever met! I always have good memories, when I think of moon cakes & that friendly young woman who welcomed us to Earth on that very first day, with her kindness towards some tiny visitors far from home.
…Later on, we took our little space kayak out on the lake & splashed & swam around & refreshed ourselves in that lovely park in Guangzhou, before bidding farewell to that beautiful area of the world!
Red is a symbol of good luck, so red fruit such as the pomegranate are often part of the festivities…as are Asian pears, star fruit, apples, oranges…
Often, the children also have a lantern parade! They each place a colorful lantern on a stick with a candle inside the lantern, & have a parade outside. We couldn’t find lanterns tiny enough for our children, so instead, they themselves all just paraded around one big lantern.
* Happy Moon Festival to You! *
,
Clay Ball
