I’d only celebrated Jūgoya/十五夜 & Otsukimi/お月見in Japan as a kid and participated in my college’s events hosted by the Asian Cultural Society, but this fall I finally got to celebrate the ‘本場の’* Mid-autumn Festival/中秋節(Zhōngqiū jié)!
Last week when Jessica and I met up to shop at the newly opened Uniqlo, she told me that Taiwanese families get together to do a barbecue, and how this food tradition began because of a campaign put on by a soy sauce company in 1967. The slogan was something along the lines of一家烤肉 萬家香, which I’m guessing means ‘one house/family grills meat, and ten thousand families can smell the fragrance.’ Those proficient in Mandarin, did I guess right?? Ah, found a commercial on Youtube!
Anyway, in Taiwan, much like other Asian countries that celebrate the Mid-autumn/Moon Festival, we eat mooncakes and pomelos and enjoy the full moon. Since a few of us ETAs were relaxing in Yilan on our first day of the four-day weekend, we got together and had our own feast to celebrate on Thursday.
Kim showed us how to cut open pomelos.
Box of mooncakes that my middle school LET, Michelle, gave me c:
Then after dinner, we went up to the rooftop to check out the moon.
No tripod with my D5200. Pretty happy.
Well, happy belated 中秋節!
*本場の(honba no) is a Japanese phrase used to describe something genuine or ‘legit.’ I couldn’t write that sentence using only English, so bear with me.
The Scooter Chronicles 