As you may or may not know - depending, I guess, on how closely you follow the festival seasons of the Chinese lunar calendar - this weekend and/or Monday (not sure, really) is Mid-Autumn Festival, i.e. Mooncake Day. This is the time every year when Chinese gather with loved ones to gaze upon the full moon, think of family and friends who may be far away, and squint just-so until they catch a glimpse of the rabbit who lives on the surface of the moon. [Who knew rabbits loved cheese so much?!]
All this in between bites of mooncake: a type of fruit-, or meat-, or egg yolk-filled pastry which has been delicately shaped and decorated. [Actually, they are pounded in a hardwood cookie-cutter-type mold, but they come out looking delicate.]
Anyway, who cares, right? Except that this year, for the first time ever, we have been invited to take part in the festival with a local family! I think once our students asked us to sit on the lawn with them, but we've never been close enough to any adult Chinese to be invited into this family-focused event. Until now. Wei, the landlady, just today requested that we join her and her husband Zhou [pronounced "Joe"] and their four-year-old daughter Meng-Meng, whose name means "dream-dream" (or basically, "little dream") to celebrate this most wonderful and ancient Chinese holiday.
We are, needless to say, very honored and humbled.
And thankful.
So when you look up into the night sky and see the "lesser light" of the evening, think of us and our Wei, and our Way.
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