Mid-Autumn Festival

Last week was Mid-Autumn Festival. This is a traditional Chinese holiday based on the lunar calendar that has been largely given up on the mainland but is still a big deal here in HK as well as in Taiwan.

On Monday there was a Mid-Autumn party hosted by the MBA office. It was your typical MBA gathering with future business leaders milling about with beer and plastic plates of food. I had interesting conversations with a finance guy from Germany, a women interested in ops and logistics from the mainland, and an American guy from non-profits. The food was fabulous as usual.

At some point during the party it was decided that it was time to light the lanterns, which is a traditional part of the mid-autumn festivities. I followed the crowd out onto the patio and observed while the Chinese students lit their disposable paper lanterns and walked around holding them on sticks. Everybody was so happy. People were smiling, laughing, and taking pictures of themselves holding lanterns. This was totally over my head. Don't get me wrong, lanterns are cool and all, but with absolutely no cultural context I had no connection to the emotional side of the ritual.

The following night we skipped class (mistake) and went to find the fire dragon ceremony. We'd heard that this was a famous performance that was culturally significant, and it sounded really cool. Every student on campus was going home for the holiday so the queues to get on the buses were incredibly long. We decided to take a cab into the city instead. We piled 5 deep into a cab and set out for Tin Hau, where we knew the fire dragon to be. We rode for about 15 minutes before hitting the gridlock. It was like Seattle x 2. We sat there for a long time. The driver sort of laughed at us when we tried to ask him about alternate routes that may not take as long. Everybody in HK was out, and the tiny size of the city was very apparent.

We finally made it to Tin Hau an hour later and stumbled into a carnival. In typical HK style there were thousands of people there. Again it was over my head. I'm not really sure what kind of carnival doesn't have rides or games or candy. A Chinese mid-autumn carnival apparently. Thousands of people were just milling about gathered around several stages with guys giving speeches or something. I assume they were speeches because there were no singers or magic tricks. There were also hundreds of lanterns hung overhead and a few very large lanternesque sculptures that were lit up. Every so often the full moon would peek out from behind the clouds and people would point and say stuff.

Eventually we realized that this was not the fire dragon ceremony. We asked someone where it was and he happened to be going there so we followed him. The fire dragon was made of what looked like very coarse rope. It was probably the length of a city block and was carried on poles by dozens of young men. The head also appeared to be made of some kind of rope and was very elaborate but not colorful at all. It wasn't actually on fire, which was too bad. It did, however, have thousands of lit insence sticks attached to it's head, back, and tail. To the sound of drum beats and a guy yelling into a megaphone, the fire dragon came running through an alley into a small square, and then circled and danced about. The huge crowd responded with cheers to the guy on the megaphone. I wish I could give a better description here but I have absolutely no idea what was going on. This night, more than ever since I have been here, I wished I spoke Cantonese. To a white-boy like me, the scene just looked like a bunch of happy people doing something odd.

On a physical level, I guess this is what rituals are. Lighting lanterns and eating cakes with your friends and family is in fact much less odd than bringing a tree into your home and covering it with bits of shiny plastic and decorations that you normally keep in a box in your basement. It's not about the act. The act can be in fact silly or impractical, and that's just fine.

After the fire dragon we went to an awesome Hunan restaurant and the English guy paid the French guy $12 to eat a really hot Chinese pepper. The French aren't accustomed to such things. It was very funny.