While I cannot devote an entire post to my eating of a moon cake (sorry Levy - I already ate the ones given to me) I can fill everyone in on the details of Mid-Autumn Festival and how I chose to celebrate.
The fifteenth day of the eighth month on the Chinese calendar is the Mid-Autumn or Moon Festival. On this day the moon is the biggest and brightest of the whole year. You go out and eat pomelos, moon cakes, and play with lanterns and candles. Sunday was the actual holiday, but everyone got Monday off as well. Being a teacher, I had to read up on the holiday and teach several lessons on why we celebrate. Apparently no one really cares why we celebrate because only 2 of my students knew the story behind the day! I won't bore you with any more history, but I will say it was all of this studying and teaching that got me pretty excited for the big day. After I had left work on Saturday I got a call from Koon saying he had forgotten to give me my moon cakes so I hurried back over and we all had a mini celebration with the fancy cakes a student's mother had bought for us. They were traditional style, but had real gold leafing on the top! I felt so classy (and resolved to blatantly favor their child so that when Chinese New Year rolls around I'll be set)! Here is a picture of me with some of the cakes. They weren't completely traditional because of their aesthetics, but taste wise they were.
So to answer your question Levy and satisfy your curiosity Michelle, the inside is a red bean paste type of thing with a duck egg in the middle. Most foreigners hate them, but I think they are pretty good! We had a giant debate at church over whether or not they were good; it got pretty heated, but we were all respectful. (That was from The Office, in case no one can get my really random insertions of quotes.)
On Sunday night I went to Victoria Park with some friends to see the lantern display they had. It was really crowded, but fun. My camera takes terrible pics at night (curse that slow shutter speed and my unsteady hand!) so I couldn't capture all the madness. But I can tell you there was a polka band and some sort competition with men wearing fur shrugs and no shirts (don't even ask - it was as weird in person as it sounds here). I took a few pictures that turned out so here they are.
Emily and Karissa
After seeing the bulk of the park we went to across the harbor to walk around and see the lights. I'll have some more pics of all of us later, but here's a blurry one of the city lights. And sorry for the extreme length, I never really mastered the concept of less being more!
2 comments:
Yuck. I've only had one chinese dessert- it was some green jelly like think covered in coconut that was really chewy and seemed to expand in my mouth. It was gross and frightening to say the least. Nonetheless, I think I would eat that ten times over before eating a duck egg masquerading as a cake! I'm very impressed that you ate it and liked it. (I ate bell peppers and I liked it!)
I'm loving the mental image of the shirtless men wearing fur shrugs! That totally beats the plain shirtless Pittsburghers we've come to know and love. It also beats out the purchase of a certain pair of fur gloves that has puzzled us for so long.
Keep having fun, and keep blogging about it so we can live vicariously through you.
You totally pull off the curly look!
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