Today was Mid-Autumn Festival, a national holiday in China. It was also the most gorgeous day we’ve had in a while, after a month of smoggy skies and a week of cloudy/rainy days. The boyfriend and I decided to spend our day off at the Fragrant Hills Park (香山公园), located in the surrounding hills of Beijing. It’s a great place to go for some exercise and clear(er) air, not to mention a view of Beijing proper when it’s not encased in smog. This was the view outside my living room window, to the north. You can see the faint outline of the surrounding hills on the horizon, which is kind of where Fragrant Hills is.
Anyway, Mid-Autumn Festival, or Zhong Qiu Jie, is my second-favorite Chinese holiday (it was replaced by Spring Festival after I experience it in China earlier this year). It’s a harvest festival, and like how Spring Festival falls on the vernal equinox every year, Mid-Autumn Festival always falls on the autumnal equinox. The Chinese believe that the moon is the biggest, brightest and roundest on this day of the year, and the Chinese love the moon. That is why this holiday is also known as the Moon Festival (at least in English). This is the moon tonight:
Yes, this moon is so spectacular to the Chinese, it gets a special holiday. Personally, I did think it looked quite nice. I snapped this photo while I was coming down the mountain, at around 6:30 p.m., so maybe it wasn’t at it’s brightest and roundest yet. I kind of wish I had been at the top of the mountain to see it rise over Beijing, but we had dinner plans. So what do the Chinese do to celebrate Moon Festival? Why, they eat mooncakes!
These are basically mini-pies filled with some kind of paste, which can be made from just about anything. Above are mooncakes I just gorged on with Boyfriend: green tea, white lotus, blueberry cheese, purple sweet potato, something gross with beef (didn’t even touch that one) and a mysterious flavor that was pretty good. Now I feel like a giant mooncake myself. My parents have always warned me not to eat too much mooncake at a time because, well, they’re not exactly healthy for you. Also, when we got them in the States, they were clearly labeled with how many egg yolks they had inside. None of the ones I’ve had here has had any egg yolk :( Nor have I seen mooncakes indicating they have any inside! (It would help.)
By the way, if you’re wondering why it’s “Mid-Autumn” Festival when autumn begins today: Don’t be so self-centered! Autumn begins in the States with the autumnal equinox, but here in China, autumn is like, old news. It started way back in August. And it lasts until the end of October. So, you see, it is mid-autumn.