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I have other essays on the back burner about fun and kooky things, like the aesthetic of authenticity and Calvin & Hobbes and hotness. But right this second I am thinking about mooncakes.
Mid-Autumn Festival — or Tết Trung Thu in Vietnamese — originated centuries ago as a celebration of the harvest. Now, in Vietnam, there are feasts and lanterns and gifts and drums and lion dancing and, of course, mooncakes.
I’ve never been a fan. They’re cloying to eat, simultaneously too sweet and too salty and too hard to chew and swallow. When I was growing up, my family would split a mooncake between four people, which we would have with tea. The ornate pastry would be quartered so that everyone would get a sliver of yolk, though I would always nudge mine to the side.
Still, these days I’m craving the too-sweet-too-salty, the tea, the family. The family.
Our celebrations were always lean, but when I moved to college, my own celebrations became more metaphorical. I’d corral a few friends into doing something, anything, partly to celebrate rituals from home but mostly to emulate a sense of home.
Nine years later, not much as changed. Last night, I cohosted a bar crawl in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Friends invited friends who invited more friends. We bought name tags and little sprout pins to “get you started on your next harvest!” We held a paper lantern in the air when the crowd followed us from bar to bar.
I’ve always been an avid hostess — deep down, I think I crave the chaos and stress of it as much as I crave the memory-making and community-building. Still, sometimes it’s too much. Last night we were at Li Po, a dive bar with dangerous mai tais, when I stepped outside for a breather. I stole a puff from my friend’s cigarette and walked down the block to get away from the noise. Obscured by neon-lit red-brick buildings, the harvest moon was nowhere to be seen.
A little tipsy and adorned with a plastic sprout on my head, I leaned against a wall and began to feel a little silly. In the first moment alone I’d had all evening, I realized that I did not care to celebrate what this season’s harvest had brought in.
As far as I was stubbornly and ungratefully concerned, it had been a summer of drought and famine. The loss of a cherished container of friendship, the loss of a job and financial stability, the loss of our beloved family dog, so sudden and violent that I haven’t even called home to acknowledge the holiday out of fear of hearing the palpable pain in my parents’ voice. The first Tết Trung Thu without my grandmother. It felt — still feels — like I’m in free fall.
But it was no longer summer. We were now officially mid-autumn, and worst of all, the pool of self-pity I was trying to wallow in was slowly drying up. The narrative of “my life is so shit” was about to expire, and it was time for a new one just in time for the harvest moon.
What would a farmer in ancient Vietnam do if their harvest had been less than ideal? I looked down at my farmer attire — a skimpy beaded tube top and black jeans — and tried to channel my inner agriculturalist.
And to be honest, all woozy-juiced Farmer Viv came up with was the fact that she had to learn from this season and try again the next. Invest in more fertile soil. In present day, I’d use the corn song to lobby the American government for more subsidies.
Rudimentary advice, if you ask me.
But for better or worse, I ended up in the middle of a dance circle that night and did my regrettably familiar move: the chicken dance. On the way of out of the club, someone complimented my sick moves. I guess sometimes you do reap what you sow.
If I were the kind of person who had healing crystals or a yoni egg, my bedroom windowsill would be prime real estate. I have a good view of the moon, unobstructed by neon lights or red brick.1
It’s not a full moon anymore. But I think I can work with it.
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Wait, how did I get here?
Oh, right. I have a few extra mooncakes — if anyone wants them, please take them off my hands! Thanks! :)
Except tonight there are clouds, so this metaphor is instantly 50% less potent.
Very cool thanks for sharing
Very cool thanks for sharing