Mid-Autumn Festival | 中秋節

September 12, 2022

This past weekend, Taiwan celebrated the Mid-Autumn festival. Each year, it is celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month. Originally, it was a time to celebrate harvest and worship the moon. Now, it is recognized as a time to reunite with family and share a tasty meal together.

A few of the traditional foods for Mid-Autumn festival include: mooncakes (月餅), pomelo (柚子), watermelon, and crab. Mooncakes are by far the most common and well-known. They come in a variety of flavors, but traditionally have a salty duck egg yolk in the middle to symbolize the moon. When eaten, they are cut into small pieces, and each person sharing the mooncake takes one bite. Personally, I don’t care for the salty egg yolk, but enjoy red bean or lotus flavored mooncakes.

Mooncake

The moon at Tamsui

Pomelo-looks like grapefruit but is sweet!

Since the festival fell on a Saturday, we had Friday off of school. Hannah and I took the day to head up to the northwest corner of Taipei where the Tamsui River meets the Taiwan Strait at Fisherman’s Wharf (漁人碼頭). We took a 1.5 hour train ride on the MRT, then hopped on a boat to cross the river to a small town called Bali (八里) and enjoyed some skewers and dumplings for lunch. Then, we crossed the river again and took another boat up to the Fisherman’s Wharf pier where we met up with the other CSAT guys near the Lover’s Bridge (情人橋). After walking around the pier for a bit, we went to the beach and were able to wade into the ocean. The water was so warm! We also got to play some frisbee, but it was a little tricky due to some heavy wind. Around dinner time, we left the beach and got a tasty dinner of noodles at the Tamsui night market. The meal, of course, was not complete until we got boba afterward. We walked around the night market a bit, and saw some fireworks over the water before hopping on the MRT to go home.

Looking back at the mountains from the boat

In Bali

Lunchtime

The beach!

Lover's bridge

Sunset from the light rail

Saturday was the actual festival day, and Wendy invited us to join her family for their festival dinner. Typically (due to a wildly successful advertising campaign a few years ago), most families barbecue for Mid-Autumn Festival, but Wendy’s family typically shares a pretty normal Chinese family-style meal. Wendy’s sister cooked most of the dishes, and everything was super delicious. We stayed up quite late sitting around the table chatting, eating pomelo, and sharing mooncakes.

Mid-Autumn Festival dinner @Wendy's sister's house

On Sunday, I attended my first church service in Taiwan. I joined Wendy’s sister, Wenmei for her bible study and worship service at a Presbyterian church that’s over 150 years old! Despite a very high language barrier, I felt very welcome in the space. Trying to understand what was going on took such a high level of focus that I was absolutely exhausted in the afternoon. Thankfully, school hasn’t ramped up too much yet, so I was able to take a pleasant nap.

I start Chinese classes this week, so my hope is that I can meet some more students and make some new connections, as well as get into more of a routine with school.