The Moon Festival

Almost all major Chinese festivals follow a lunar calendar. The Moon Festival falls on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon. This is when the moon is full and is said to be perfectly round. Because the moon festival honours the female goddess of the moon, the the women in the family prepare for the holiday. Houses are cleaned from top to bottom and moon cakes of many different varieties are prepared. People in China say they see a rabbit in the moon, not a man as we tend to say. The jade rabbit often appears in posters celebrating the Moon Festival.

This year the Moon Festival was in late September. Junling from Kew High gave us a moon cake, filled with sweet red bean paste. Camille thought it was delicious. We also hung a few lanterns and ate a home cooked Chinese meal of stir fried beef, ginger and spinach. However, we didn’t quite get around to cleaning the house from top to bottom.