The Mid-Autumn Festival

I wake up and moonbeams play around my bed



Glittering like morning frost to my wondering eyes



Upwards the glorious moon I raise my head



Then lay me down and thoughts of home arise



These words written by the famous poet Li Bai during the Tang Dynasty to describe his feelings of loneliness and homesickness during the Autumn season. This poem is the mantra of the Chinese Mid-Autumn- a festival that is in many ways similar to Thanksgiving. It is a time for family to come together, to share a meal, and to reconnect. China is a vast country and many people both in the past and the present have looked to this holiday as a moment of homecoming.

In the West this festival is known as the Moon festival because the day of the festival coincides with the day in the lunar calender in which the moon is the most full. The deep mythology surrounding the holiday is also centered around the moon. First, Li Bai's poem uses the moon as a common reference shared by all of the places on earth. Basking in the glow of the moonlight, staring up at the sky, one can imagine that they are home looking at the same scene. This sentiment is also embedded into Chinese mythology. For one, the moon is that place that the aforementioned Consort Yang went after her death to wait for her emperor Xuanzang. She also took a rabbit with her to stave of her loneliness and that is why the face of the moon can look like either a rabbit or a woman's face to the Chinese mind. Also connected to the moon is the moon cake. A doughy, filling-stuffed cake is pressed with auspicious symbols and eaten under moonlight. The fillings range from rose, to watermelon seed, and even grass (some good, some not so good).This homemade mooncake is filled with rose, walnuts, and sesame. In addition to the cakes many round fruits are also shared as gifts since the shape is similar to the moon. The roundness also represents the unity of the family.

The Mid-Autumn festival is a moment of family gathering that is gaining more and more importance as Chinese society adapts into a highly mobile, industrialized, consumer society. For both rich and poor, Chinese family's are changing. Buying a train ticket at this time of year is especially hard because of the massive number of migrant workers who flood China's train stations looking to return home. In the southern mega city of Guangzhou, which is home to many export oriented businesses and a large portion of China's 200 million + migrant workers, between 68,000 and 70,000 passengers a day flow through its major train station. I recently had the opportunity to engage some mid-level energy bureaucrats in a discussion about Chinese cultural change. They were mostly male, between the ages of 30 and 60, both rural and urban, and party members. I asked them about how and why China's family structure is changing and they gave me a few answers. First is the one child policy, this is of course going to affect the traditional family structure because it is limiting the size of the extended family. The Chinese have a term for the often self centered and spoiled only child that is the result of this policy- little emperors and princesses.

Second was industrialization. Industrialization affects the family two fold. One is that is pushes urbanization and two is that changes the fundamental working unit for value production from the family to the individual. Most of the bureaucrats thought that China's young people were much more individualistic than their older counterparts and more concerned with money. Third, was that the family was not changing that much. Family is still very important to the Chinese people. Remember that the Chinese have a long history of ancestor worship and that China is a country where children are the social security system. Many families still live close to their parents and use grandparents as the primarily child care provider. Still it is hard to ignore the changes that the average Chinese family is going through in the wake of China's massive economic reorientation. This makes family holidays like the Mid-Autumn festival all the more important as China looks to hold onto its roots as it reaches for the sky.

For me, now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, I too feel that sense of distance from my home so eloquently stated in Li Bai's poem. China is certainly not the US and it is easy to feel alone in a place so far away from the familiar. It makes me thankful for the technologies that bring to you my thoughts and feelings on this blog and allow me to call home when the timing is right. I would also like to thank you for reading and commenting on my life here in China it brings me back home and reminds me that I am part of a network of family and friends that transcends our individualistic world. And that for me is the true meaning of these holidays.