Mid-Autumn Festival, commonly known as Moon Festival or Lantern Festival falls on Wednesday 22 September (today) this year.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the few most important holidays in the Chinese calendar, the others being Chinese New Year and Winter Solstice, and is a legal holiday in several countries including Hong Kong.

Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date.

Traditionally on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomelos under the moon together. Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as:

* Putting pomelo rinds on one’s head (popular activity at kindergartens)

* Carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, floating sky lanterns

* Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang’e (Chinese: 嫦娥; pinyin: Cháng’é)

* Planting Mid-Autumn trees

* Collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members

* Fire Dragon Dances

* (my favourite) In Taiwan barbecuing meat outdoors

(Source: wikipedia)

Here in Hong Kong, while today is the official Mid-Autumn Festival, tomorrow is known as the-day-after-Mid-Autumn-Festival and is a public holiday.

Major international websites such as Google and Yahoo also have special page decorations to celebrate the day.

Google.com’s special page header today

Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival (traditional Chinese: 中秋節), is a popular harvest festival celebrated by Chinese people, dating back over 3,000 years to moon worship in China’s Shang Dynasty.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar, which this year falls on September 22.

Traditionally on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomelos.

When we lived in Taiwan, as South Africans Moon Festival-time was extra special because for the Taiwanese, having an outdoor braai (barbecue) with friends and family was part of the celebration.  The braais would often take place in large parks and public courtyards of high-rise buildings and is quite a spectacle with all the fires, smoke and smell of cooking meat.  We used to think of Moon Festival as our own National Braai Day celebration!  Sadly, Hong Kongers do not celebrate Moon Festival in this way.

Another tradition is the giving of moon cakes to family, friends and colleagues.  Typical mooncakes are round or rectangular pastries. A thick filling usually made from lotus seed paste is surrounded by a thin crust and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs. Mooncakes are usually eaten in small wedges accompanied by Chinese tea.

These days mooncakes come is all kinds of designs, flavours and fillings ranging from marshmallow to even ice-cream.

One of my favourite local stores is G.O.D. or Goods Of Desire, so named because G.O.D. is the phonetic sound of the Cantonese slang “to live better.”  Typical of G.O.D, their stores here in Hong Kong are pushing the boundaries of modernising the traditional Chinese moon cake with their very own “Cheeky Moon Cakes.”

G.O.D.’s Cheeky Moon Cakes are available at HK$65 (buy 10, get 1 free)  Orders can be placed at any G.O.D. store.