Three major festivals would prominently feature on Chinese calendar – New Year, Dragon Boat and Moon festival. I love the third one the most because of the humungous amount of sweets that are distributed. Having missed those burfis and laddoos, I worked overtime making up for the loss by eating those delicious moon cakes. Moon festival is the 15th day of the 8th lunar month and as a tradition moon cakes are devoured while the full moon shines in the sky.
Traditional mooncakes have full yolk in the centre but these days they come in all forms and all sizes. It is a good time to get in touch with business associates (Diwali anyone?)
Some different types of mooncakes
I will save you the slack and you can see what ever you want to know about the tradition of moon festival at this link Wiki – Moon festival .
There is a new barbeque tradition that is emerging in Taiwan. Friends and families arrange for barbeque evenings during the full moon and it makes an interesting evolution to the tradition.
This year (2006) , the moon festival holiday falling on a friday close to the 10/10 Taiwanese holiday made it a great weekend. A good 5-day off (make me a worried man on how would i spend those 5 days, forunately lady luck smiled on me). Not to lessen the fun, the ‘redshirts’ (wrongly compared to the ‘blackshirts’) staged a ’siege’ on the President Chen Shui-bien. I am no political commentator and I will abstain from it.
Not to be missed in Taipei on 10/10 is those wonderful fireworks. I have never seen such ingenous fireworks with smilees, blooming flower and a wide range of colorful fireworks in the 1-hr show. To reach the place, go to Taipei Main Station and you will see a crowd of people waiting to board the buses to the riverside site of the fireworks. Just follow the crowd.
Al-in-all it was a great long weekend.
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