So last week we had Tuesday off in celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival, a time for gathering for families and hanging out with each other (kid of like a Chinese Thanksgiving). With this holiday comes many traditions.
One of the traditions is a food called moon cake. They are 3" rounds that are filled with different things. The truly traditional ones have lotus seed insides with egg yolk (none of the exchange students that tried these could stomach more than a bite). Others have bean paste filling (these were worse than the egg yolk ones) or sesame filling that looked like tar (and is by far the grossest thing I have ever tasted). Some truly delicious ones that Izzy and I tried tasted like cookie dough! We have no idea what they had in them because everything was in Cantonese and we bought them ourselves, but they were fantastic! Too bad we never found them again and the season is over,so they aren't sold any longer. Though pretty much all of them that we tasted were horrible, I'm glad that I was able to experience a dish so different from American cuisine. What was really nice is that some friends on the floor (the girls my roommate and I share a bathroom with) left us a moon cake and a note telling us that they were sorry we were so far from our family on a holiday like this and hope that we could enjoy the moon cake instead (neither of us have touched the moon cake, because neither of us like them, but the gesture was incredibly nice!)
On that note, I have found that while being here in Hong Kong, everyone, student on campus, or random person on the street, have been extremely kind. Helping with translations, directions or just wanting to talk, we haven't really met rude people here. It is a greatly appriciated, though rather unexpected, surprise.
Another tradition is the festivals that happen the three days around the holiday. One is a parade of sorts with a 40' incense dragon. Pictures of this were hard to get because when we got there a little late and the number of people that surrounded the display was incredible. What amazed me was how potent the incense coming form the dragon were. They wafted down the street and we could smell them before we reached the crowds. Another surprise was that the entertainment they had paired with the dragon was a Scottish marching band. All of the members seemed of be of Asian decent, but they were wearing plaid and kilts and playing bagpipes and the likes. I was really confused the whole time, especially since it is a holiday for Chinese countries. Even with the music, it was still a neat display.
From there we went to the Lantern Show. It was a display of lighted lanterns in Victoria Park. This was much easier to get pictures of, so take a look at what we got to see!
this is a replica of what the incense dragon looked like
The whole night was fun to see! What was better was that we were invited to see this by a local buddy so she was able to describe the different aspects and share with us interesting details and stories of the holiday. It was a great way to experience a new holiday!
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