The Mid-Autumn Festival

Tonight the moon is at its fullest and brightest; hopefully Tropical Depression Gener which entered our area of responsibility yesterday won’t spoil our moon-gazing. It’s the harvest moon, which marks the Mid-Autumn Festival, the 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar.

My grandmother used to say that with the “fires” (heat) of the seventh month having been extinguished, we can expect the weather to cool down and soon begin to turn chilly (which meant the sleeveless dresses and shirts go to the back of the cabinet). The 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar is approximately the autumnal equinox, when the Earth’s axis is neither turned toward nor away from the sun, so day and night are almost equal in length. For countries in the northern hemisphere, this marks the start of fall, and for those in the southern hemisphere, the start of spring. For us here in the tropics, it means a cooling of the weather – though not really by much, since, in truth, our weather is determined by the monsoon (still the habagat from the southwest) and the typhoons.

All that science aside, the Mid-Autumn Festival is the second most important festival in the Chinese year. It’s harvest season in the agricultural regions, a time of plenty, and a good harvest is always reason to celebrate.

Some refer to it as the Mooncake Festival, which is a bit of a misnomer, for traditionally the festival is not about the cakes but the moon. Chang’e is the Moon Goddess who stole the elixir of immortality from her husband Hou Yi, the great archer who shot down nine of the 10 suns scorching the Earth, thus saving the populace and enabling crops to grow. Chang’e fled or was banished to live in the Moon Palace with her rabbit Yu Tu. But having subsequently forgiven his wife for her betrayal, Hou Yi spent nights looking up at the moon. He would also leave her favorite cakes and fruits out at night, a practice continued to this day as offerings to the Moon Goddess. Incidentally, the modern-day lunar exploration program of the Chinese government is named after Chang’e.

The mooncake is an important part of the Mid-Autumn Festival for sure, and in fact was instrumental in a sort of “people power” uprising in the late Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). Suffering under the cruel rule of the Yuan, Zhu Yuanzhang tried to unite the people for an uprising. Information about the coup – scheduled for the 15th night of the eighth month – was tucked into mooncakes that were given out (this ingenious idea is credited to Liu Bowen). At the appointed time, the people rose up and defeated the Yuan troops. After the successful uprising, Zhu gifted the ministers with mooncakes, thus starting the tradition that deliciously lives on to this day.

There are many varieties of mooncakes, the most familiar of which is the Cantonese one made of lotus seed paste or red bean paste. Often added is a salted duck egg yolk – or two, sometimes even three – and nuts, which used to be watermelon seeds or butong pakwan, which gave rise to the urban legend of the group of old aunties sitting around in a room above the bakery cracking butong pakwan with their teeth, or what’s left of their teeth! The Shanghai mooncake is savory, with a delicious pork filling. Modern twists feature dried fruits added to the filling, which now comes in nouveau flavors like pandan, coffee, cheese and whatnot. The constant is that they must be round, in obvious reference to the full moon; some tried making them square – such heresy!

*      *      *

Tied to the tradition of the mooncake is the dice game, which of late has had a resurgence in popularity in the Tsinoy community. When we were kids, my grandma gathered everyone to pua tiong chiu – play the mid-autumn dice game. Traditionally the prizes were hopia of different sizes (you could buy a whole set from the bakery, which included the dice and a rule book) corresponding to the values of the roll of the dice. The smallest hopia (32 of them) was about an inch and a half in diameter, moving up to the grand prize – a humongous hopia 10-12 inches in diameter. There are a total of six levels, the hopia prizes increasing in size and decreasing in number, from 32 to 16 to 8 to 4 to 2 and to the one big kahuna. We got so sick of all that hopia my grandma decided to have other prizes – the most popular of course was cash (crisp red bills!) and toys for the kids.

The dice game supposedly dates back to the Qing Dynasty in the 1600s, originating from Xiamen, where most Tsinoys are from, hence the popularity hereabouts. It’s a game of chance, literally a roll of the dice – six of them actually, in a bowl; if one jumps out you lose your turn. The grand prize or tsiong guan is four red four’s; if you happen to get all six red four’s you get to grab every prize on the table. You also host next year’s festivity to celebrate and spread your good fortune. If, however, you’re unlucky enough to get all six black sixes, woe unto you and you should smash the bowl and make blowout everyone to counter the bad luck.

We played the dice game after our regular Sunday dinner the other night. My niece the game master brought her teeny colorful dice, each no bigger than a pea so we had to use a magnifying glass. Next year we’re buying bigger dice but we’ve been saying that for three years now. Our prizes were creative for sure, ranging from magnetic tic-tac-toe games to erasable ballpens to plate and bowl sets to my grand prize – a Fernando Zobel art fan, won by no less than the game master herself.