Moon Cake Festival

One thing that I find challenging, being a Malaysian dad with an American wife and daughters is the lack of tradition. Not that there is a paucity of Western cultures and traditions, just that I think it's human nature to want to impart to our kids the things we did growing up. The games we played, foods we ate, the festivities we took part in.

And so, came this Moon Cake festival, I was determined to try share some of my childhood activities with the kids.

I had to resort to Amazon to find the lanterns; my surprise I wasn't able to find them in the Asian stores here. I discovered that while the MidAutumn festival is celebrated in numerous countries, it appears that the part about the lanterns is unique to Malaysia?

I spent some time today telling Alli about what we did; how mom and dad would take us out to pick out our lanterns, and being a Dragon that would usually be my pick. I remember that big-ass lantern I got that one year. How we would light up little colored candles and stick them in, and carried the lanterns on bamboo sticks and walked around the neighborhood at night. Found some pictures on the internet to show her, and reminisced my childhood.

I remember the foods we'd eat. Of course, the infamous moon cake. Something I never really appreciated growing up. But now, now that I'm so far away from my other home, I crave it perhaps in a feeble attempt to relive those experiences (I can't believe I actually paid RM22 for a single mooncake!). I told Alli the stories mom told me, of how the people of the Ming dynasty used to hide messages in the cakes to plan their fight against the Mongolian invaders- don't know if they're historically accurate, but it was still a neat story.

I also remember those things mom used to make- I have no clue what they are, but they were black shells of something that was shaped like a cow's head, with some starchy white filling inside (anyone knows what they are?).

Anyway, the girls had perhaps a few fleeting moments of fun with the lanterns, and that was about it. In a silly sort of way, there is a certain tinge of sadness, knowing your kids will never appreciate the things you did as a child, but then again this is to be expected growing up in a totally different world. And the mooncakes, well, let's just say they didn't fall in love with it! >_<

Maybe next year. Happy Moon cake festival, guys!