Moon festival leaves most expats baffled or amused
- Source: Global Times
- [08:07 September 21 2010]
- Comments
By Ryan Ulrich
Many foreigners don't feel connected to the Chinese holidays and the Mid-Autumn Festival is no exception. How many foreigners actually give each other moon cakes, anyway?
I think many foreigners look at some Chinese holidays like this with a mixture of curiosity, fascination, and humor, if they pay attention to it at all.
It would be good if laowai could better understand these holidays and feel more integrated into the society at large. I for one, would like to feel that way.
The meaning and origin of the holiday have various interpretations. Most stories involve a goddess, an archer and a rabbit. Another version says that the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) was overthrown by using small pieces of paper inside the moon cakes to organize a rebellion. This must have been the pre-modern equivalent of a fortune cookie.
In different places the holiday is celebrated differently. In the mainland there are gatherings with friends and family and the exchange of the ubiquitous moon cakes. In Taiwan the holiday had somehow evolved into the biggest outdoor barbeque of the year. This results in a huge amount of trash left over the next day, mostly plastic cups and wooden sticks.
It's easy enough to get a vague idea about the holiday from newspaper clippings and Wikipedia, but it's more difficult to take part in it and it's even harder to have that long cultural experience that comes from growing up in a place.
Foreigners usually don't have as many connections to the Chinese community. Even if they are married or have close ties here, there seems to be a little disconnect to the holidays. So the Mid-Autumn Festival seems far away, distant and removed.
A big part of the holiday revolves around moon cakes, which is how most foreigners most quickly come to know the Mid-Autumn Festival.
There is a moon cake economy as the food becomes a currency of its own at this time when packages are passed along from one to another. Sometimes two people exchange moon cakes that they themselves both received from other people and there's a good chance that some of the moon cakes will actually wind up back with the original owner.
There is a whole economy and black market that popped up around coupons for moon cakes at stores. With the elaborate packing, some moon cakes can sell for as high as 900 yuan ($134) a box. Coupons for these and other moon cakes can be resold to agents for a certain amount of the face value. It has become another way to give a bribe without actually giving hard currency.
The buying frenzy for moon cakes reminds me of the rush before Christmas in the US to buy gifts for family and friends.
This whole weekend I saw loads of people just buying carton after carton of moon cakes. On one public bus I was on, I counted at least 10 boxes of moon cakes among the 15 passengers sitting in the front of the bus. But who is eating all these moon cakes?
It seems like after all the gifting is done, the people who originally received the moon cakes are seldom the ones who eat them. My friend told me that usually it was students at her school who finally got all the moon cakes that were accumulated by professors or the parents of classmates. The poor students, she said, were always happy to get free food no matter if it was healthy or not.
But the holiday seems to be relatively misunderstood or ignored by many foreigners in China. For Chinese it's a little clearer and the connections between the full moon, family and gifting elaborate boxes supposedly make more sense, though many Chinese do complain that many of the old traditions have been lost in a modern consumer life.
But with a little encouragement from friends and a little bit of attention, curiosity and open-mindedness from expats, everyone can celebrate the moon festival.
The author is a project assistant at APCO Worldwide, a global communications company. rsu.ryanulrich@gmail.com
