Happy Mid-Autumn Festival

On the 15th day of 8th month in lunar calendar, Chinese and lots of people in Asia countries celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, which sometimes is also called "Moon Festival", since the moon is supposed to be the roundest and brightest of the year on this day. This year, the mid-autumn festivall falls to today, September 22nd, 2010.

As much as I like to give you a perfect explaination of the origin of Mid-Autumn Festival, I found myself is short of words, as well as time today. So, if you are interested in learning more about this traditional Chinese festival, you can read it here.  Also, Autumn Belle at "My Nice Garden" wrote a sieries of posts about "Mid-Autumn Festival", and I am sure you will enjoy her beautiful writings very well.

The full moon is also a symbol of reunion for Chinese.  So usually family would get together on this day to enjoy a nice dinner, and then go outside to look up the moon, eat the moon cakes and spread the good wishes to the loved ones.  We did eat moon cakes today, and I also took a picture of this full moon. 

When I looked up the moon, I was thinking about my family in China who was also looking the same moon (12 hours earlier though), and felt the closeness to them.

Chinese also think the Mid-Autumn Festival night is a perfect night for lovers getting together, so called "花好月圆夜"  (Hua Hao Yue Yuan Ye).  From the surface of the words, it means this is a night with beautiful flowers and perfect moonlights, therefore a perfect night for lovers to express their feelings in such peaceful and beautiful environment.

Let me contribute some flowers currently blooming in my garden to this beautiful Mid-Autumn Festival night without much wordings... I have purposely chosen those flowers with cool soothing tone to match the silver moon light tonight.

Happy Mid Autumn Festival, My Friends!