Mid Autumn Festival 2011

Mid Autumn Festival is a Chinese Festival which is widely associated with playing with lanterns, eating mooncakes and drinking tea. It is celebrated on 15 Aug of the lunar calender where the moon is the biggest and the brightest.

Story on Mid Autumn Festival

According to Wikipedia, Celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival is strongly associated with the legend of Houyi and Chang'e, the Moon Goddess of Immortality. Tradition places these two figures from Chinese mythology at around 2200 BCE, during the reign of the legendary Emperor Yao, shortly after that of Huangdi. Unlike manylunar deities in other cultures who personify the moon, Chang'e simply lives on the moon but is not the moon herself.

There are many variants and adaptations of the legend of Chang'e that frequently contradict each other. However, most versions of the legend involve some variation of the following elements: Houyi, the Archer, an emperor, either benevolent or malevolent, and an elixir of life.

One version of the legend states that Houyi was an immortal and Chang'e was a beautiful young girl, working in the palace of the Jade Emperor (theEmperor of Heaven, 玉帝 pinyin:Yùdì) as an attendant to the Queen Mother of the West (the Jade Emperor's wife). Houyi aroused the jealousy of the other immortals, who then slandered him before the Jade Emperor. Houyi and his wife, Chang'e, were subsequently banished from heaven. They were forced to live on Earth. Houyi had to hunt to survive and became a skilled and famous archer.

At that time, there were ten suns, in the form of three-legged birds, residing in a mulberry tree in the eastern sea. Each day one of the sun birds would have to travel around the world on a carriage, driven by Xihe, the 'mother' of the suns. One day, all ten of the suns circled together, causing the Earth to burn. Emperor Yao, the Emperor of China, commanded Houyi to use his archery skill to shoot down all but one of the suns. Upon completion of his task, the Emperor rewarded Houyi with a pill that granted eternal life. Emperor Yao advised Houyi not to swallow the pill immediately but instead to prepare himself by praying and fasting for a year before taking it.^[3] Houyi took the pill home and hid it under a rafter. One day, Houyi was summoned away again by Emperor Yao. During her husband's absence, Chang'e, noticed a white beam of light beckoning from the rafters, and discovered the pill. Chang'e swallowed it and immediately found that she could fly. Houyi returned home, realizing what had happened he began to reprimand his wife. Chang'e escaped by flying out the window into the sky.^[3]

Houyi pursued her halfway across the heavens but was forced to return to Earth because of strong winds. Chang'e reached the moon, where she coughed up part of the pill.^[3] Chang'e commanded the hare that lived on the moon to make another pill. Chang'e would then be able to return to Earth and her husband.^{[citation needed]}

The legend states that the hare is still pounding herbs, trying to make the pill. Houyi built himself a palace in the sun, representing "Yang" (the male principle), in contrast to Chang'e's home on the moon which represents "Yin" (the female principle). Once a year, on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Houyi visits his wife. That is the reason why the moon is very full and beautiful on that night.^[3]

This description appears in written form in two Western Han dynasty (206 BC-24 AD) collections; Shan Hai Jing, the Classic of the Mountains and Seas and Huainanzi, a philosophical classic.^[4]

Another version of the legend, similar to the one above, differs in saying that Chang'e swallowed the pill of immortality because Peng, one of Houyi's many apprentice archers, tried to force her to give the pill to him. Knowing that she could not fight off Peng, Chang'e had no choice but to swallow the pill herself.^{[citation needed]}

Other versions say that Houyi and Chang'e were still immortals living in heaven at the time that Houyi killed nine of the suns. The sun birds were the sons of the Jade Emperor, who punished Houyi and Chang'e by forcing them to live on Earth as mortals. Seeing that Chang'e felt extremely miserable over her loss of immortality, Houyi decided to find the pill that would restore it. At the end of his quest, he met the Queen Mother of the West, who agreed to give him the pill, but warned him that each person would only need half a pill to regain immortality. Houyi brought the pill home and stored it in a case. He warned Chang'e not to open the case, and then left home for a while. Like Pandora in Greek mythology, Chang'e became curious. She opened up the case and found the pill, just as Houyi was returning home. Nervous that Houyi would catch her, discovering the contents of the case, she accidentally swallowed the entire pill, and started to float into the sky because of the overdose.

Some versions of the legend do not refer to Houyi or Chang'e as having previously been immortals and initially present them as mortals instead.

There are also versions of the story in which Houyi was made king as a reward for killing nine of the suns and saving the people. However, King Houyi became a despot who either stole a pill of immortality from the Queen Mother of the West or learned that he could make such a pill by grinding up the body of a different adolescent boy every night for a hundred nights. Chang'e stole the pill and swallowed it herself, either to stop more boys being killed or to prevent her husband's tyrannical rule from lasting forever.

Our Journey

We set off from the hostel at approximately 7:15pm. Well, the mass lantern procession was supposed to start at 7:30pm at the open field near Outram Park MRT station. However, we had a hard time trying to find the open field because it is such a vague description! By the time we finally found a field (which we still do not know whether it is the open field which the organisers were talking about), it was about 8pm. We were not sure whether the event got cancelled because of the rain or that we were too late. Eventually after asking a few people, we ended up in Chinatown where we saw tonnes of people and I knew that we were on the right track!

 There was even a makeshift stage with skimpily beautifully-dressed chinese ladies playing the traditional chinese instruments!

Well, by then it was about 8:30pm and all of us were starving!!!! Thus, we decided to get some food before we decide what we are going to do next. 

We found a random restaurant and ordered about 9 dishes for 9 of us. Beers were really cheap there! It was only S$6 for a big bottle! That was probably the reason why this guy puked just beside our table. Sorry Phuong, Simon and Iain. All 3 of them got the puke either on their hand or feet. :(

For some reason, Simon seems very amused with chopsticks and I have no idea why Camilla had that expression on her face. It is funny, so here it is!

After dinner, we decided that we were not going to let the rain stop us! So what if it rains? So what if no one else was playing with lanterns! We had already bought the lantern, and we were not going to let anything stop us! 

Poor Iain. He had to hold all the girls' lanterns when we went to the toilet.

Special way of holding lanterns

All of us with our beloved lanterns! 

We walked from Chinatown to Clarke Quay. Was not that far. Maybe around 10-15 minutes walk? After that, we bought a couple of beers and just sat on the bridge to drink. Much cheaper than going to a bar! Imagine a drink costing about S$15 for a pint in a bar, compared to a 6-pack beer for S$20. Much better deal!

Many thanks to our photographer for the night! This post will not be possible without you! :)