Since it's a lunar holiday it is, of course, pegged to the lunar calendar, so the holiday falls on a different Gregorian calendar day each year but it's usually in September or early October. This year it's September 30th.
When I lived in Hong Kong in the 80s and 90s, this was like Easter and Christmas and Halloween all rolled into one. Family and friends get together for a meal then, for dessert, eat mooncake. Afterwards they would go out to the park (in HK it was Victoria Park) to buy and walk around with paper lanterns while enjoying a full moon.
To some this may sound, well, rather boring especially when you consider Easter is a time for chocolates, Christmas is a time for presents, and Halloween is a time to rake in confectionery goodies, but trust me, it's fun. It's also a mindblowing sight if you live in a skyscraper that offers a view with hundreds of lanterns moving around below.
I mentioned earlier that you eat mooncake. What is mooncake? It's a little cake with pastry shell covering a sweet inner paste made of lotus, date, or red bean and if you're lucky, an egg yolk (presumably representing the moon).
I like mooncake the same way I like pumpkin pie. During Thanksgiving, it's ok, however; if I ate pumpkin pie in March or on my birthday in September, I would hate it. Why? Simple. It's a Thanksgiving treat. Same goes for fruitcake; at Christmas it's fine (scratch that, fruitcake is always vile but you get what I mean). Mooncake is one of those nice things during Mid-autumn Festival. I have happy associations with this treat for the holiday but wouldn't want to eat it any other time of the year.
We missed last week's Moon Festival celebrations in SF's Chinatown. I still plan to eat some moon cake on the 30th though while watching the moon. We even have some solar-powered lanterns hanging in the trees for the occasion.
You can pick up moon cakes through the mid autumn festival at any Chinese bakery and most Chinese supermarkets. Often they come in big tinned boxes to be given as gifts. You can also buy tiny singles which I recommend if you've never sampled one before. We tend to pick up a couple at Sheng Kee. They have numerous branches in SF and the Bay Area.
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