Last week was the Autumn Moon Festival, aka the Mid-Autumn Festival in Vietnam. At school, we had some traditional "moon cakes" for snack. Sound delicious, right? Truth be told, they are pretty gross. Moon cakes are basically the worst version of fruit cake that you will ever try. They not only have fruit, but nuts, beans, meat, and often contain things like shark fin. Mmmm... delicious! I tried some at school but was not a fan. Actually, most of the students did not want to eat them at all! I couldn't really blame them.
For the Moon Festival, we also had a dragon dance in the school gym. It was interesting to see, and the students really enjoyed it.
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| The "Four Lions" dance |
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| The dragon dance |
Wikipedia tells me that the Vietnamese Mid-Autumn Festival is called "Tết Trung Thu." According to the website... the Vietnamese holiday recounts the legend of
Cuội, whose wife accidentally urinated on a sacred banyan tree. Soon after desecrating the tree, she sat on one of the tree branches and the sacred tree began to grow and continued until it finally reached the moon, leaving Cuội's wife stranded there. Every year, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, children light lanterns and participate in a procession to show Cuội's wife the way back to Earth. Strange, but cool!
Sooo....wanna send me the recipe for those moon cakes? lol j/k
ReplyDeleteHaha... I don't think moon cakes will be making an appearance on Veggin in the City.
ReplyDeleteWe think we will pass on those moon cakes. Interesting story about Cuoi's wife. Do they celebrate Chinese New Year's there?
ReplyDeleteThey celebrate Tet here. Tet is basically the Vietnamese celebration for lunar new year, which coincides with Chinese new year. It's in January!
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