12 Sep 2011– Mid-Autumn/中秋節

Baby Hald-Hermansen is one week today and has now spent the weekend at Kolsås. Life is going as it should, ie he eats, sleeps and soils his diapers! Human new-born are most helpless but also the sweetest perfect little being.

The info below is a repeat from 2009, thus this is for the benefit to new readers. or to those who are interested.

Mid-autumn also known as Lantern/MoonCake Festival falls on 15th day of the 8th month in the Lunar/Chinese calendar. It is a date that parallels the autumn and spring Equinoxes of the solar calendar, when the moon is supposedly at its fullest and roundest. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different varieties as there are with stories and legends preference is the simple plain old-fashioned mooncake.

This day is also considered a harvest festival since fruits, vegetables and grain had been harvested by this time and food was abundant. Food offerings were placed on an altar set up in the courtyard and the memories of this scene is still very intact! Peaches, pomegranates, melons, oranges and pomelos are the usual, the offerings might have lessened after men set foot on the moon :-)Special foods other than the mooncake for the festival are cooked taro and water caltrop/菱角, a type of water chestnut resembling bulls’ horns, impossible to crack without a hammer!

Fond childhood memories of animal-shaped lanterns beautifully made of coloured cellophane paper decorated with a variety of coloured glitter. After the sunset, candles lit inside these lanterns gave an exquisite sight. Walking and balancing with these lanterns was a skill and inevitably somebody’s lantern would catch fire resulting in tears. Magically there were always spare ones and tears were soon forgotten and the celebration resumed.

I don’t know if there are men on the moon, but if there are they must be using the earth as their lunatic asylum – George Bernard Shaw