Today during their visit, Ma and Gong reminisced about the celebrations of the Mid-Autumn Moon Fest in Thailand during their childhoods. They would make paper lanterns by hand, carefully folding special paper with the aid of a pen knife and a ruler (they demonstrated, roughly, with notepaper.) At night, they would process gingerly with lit candles inside the delicate lanterns to celebrate the moon and the harvest. Often, the lanterns would catch fire before too long. They would eat Chinese mooncakes, stamped with images and writing, filled with lotus seed paste or nuts, seeds, and citrus They also remember it as a holiday for women, with the Buddha's altar decorated with handicrafts, cosmetics, brushes, and other feminine articles. It was a holiday, they recall, associated with Kwan Yin (or Guanyin)--or in Thai, Kuan Im--the goddess of mercy and compassion.
They told us these stories, demonstrated how to make lanterns, roughly, with a piece of notebook paper, and gave us mooncakes and pink and blue lanterns for our own celebration tomorrow. We'll eat the mooncakes (or the rest of them; we started early! Sis likes the lotus paste. I eat both, but not the egg yolk inside. Mama likes them all; not Bud.) and head outside at dusk with our new lanterns. We'll also read some of the stories about the Moon Rabbit, who (I think) lives in the harvest moon and Kwan Yin.
Happy Moon Fest, everyone!
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