Happy Moon Festival! Also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, tonight brings the fullest and brightest moon of the year.
The Mid-Autumn Festival—sometimes called the Mooncake Festival—is a traditional Chinese harvest celebration held on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, under a full moon. This year, it falls on October 6th. For Chinese communities worldwide, it’s the second most important holiday after Lunar New Year.
Over the past day, I’ve been sending holiday wishes to Chinese friends and family on WeChat and here in the West. An old middle-school classmate shared a stunning shot she took last night by the White Pagoda at Miaoying Temple (白塔寺) in Beijing. The pagoda stands where the Yong’an Temple once stood during the Liao Dynasty (916–1125). That neighborhood is where we grew up—for about ten years, I passed this pagoda on weekly bus rides between home and school.
The melody in the song is inspired by a traditional tune in China called 《彩云追月》, literal translation is ‘colorful clouds chase the moon’. This melody became popular in Guangdong province as early as the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912 AD).
To mark the day, I’d like to share a couplet by Zhang Jiuling (张九龄, Tang Dynasty, 678–740 AD):
“海上生明月，天涯共此时。
Over the sea, the moon shines bright;
We gaze on it, far, far apart.”
These lines are from his poem “Looking at the Moon and Thinking of One Far Away” (《望月怀远》), expressing how, despite the distance, we share the same moonlit moment.
Wu Fei 吴非
Wufeimusic.com
