Autumn Fables and Food - 中秋佳節
Tsarn Er's Leap to the Moon 嫦蛾奔月
In stories passed down from long ago, Chinese people believed there were two worlds. One that us humans lived in on earth and one above where the Gods and immortals lived in called heaven. There were also ten suns instead of one at one time. The ten suns took turn to shine on earth to provide light needed for living things to grow. But one day the ten suns decided to shine all at once on earth. The blazing heat started to dry up the land. The rivers dwindled and the oceans shrank. Grass died so animals had no food to feed on. Crops died so people had nothing to feed on either. There was a famine going on and the only thing people could do was to pray. They prayed to the gods in heaven to relieve them of such sufferings. The King of All Gods heard their plea and sent one of his best warriors, Ho Yi, to look into the problem.Ho Yi and his wife, Tsarn Er left their heavenly dwelling and descended onto earth for their temporary assignment. At first Ho Yi tried to persuade the ten suns to go back the old ways and take turn in shining on earth. The ten suns were too arrogant to listen and worst, they started showing off by turning on the heat more and even shining through the night. Seeing creatures on earth wither away in the heat and that time was running out, Ho Yi resorted to his talent of archery and started shooting down the suns. He took aim and shot down one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine suns, leaving only one. The wounded suns dropped beyond the horizon and disappeared into the unknown. The one sun left agreed to shine on earth half of the day and go away at night to rest. The earth went back to normal. Rivers once again ran through lands in full and irrigated the crops. Trees and grass started to grow back. Farmers could harvest crops and animals roamed the earth in strides. People were again content and happy.
The King of All Gods, however, was not pleased, for the ten suns were his sons. Now that nine of them had died at Ho Yi's hands, he wanted Ho Yi to pay for it. Out of grief and anger, he condemned Ho Yi and his wife to become mere mortals and banished them from ever returning to heaven again.
On earth, Ho Yi was a hero and treated like a king. At first he enjoyed being revered but soon his mortality loomed over him like a dark cloud he could not escape. He became unhappy. So did his wife, Tsarn Er, who had been feeling very lonely and missed all the luxuries and what things used to be in heaven. One day, Ho Yi heard about an herbalist living deep in the mountains had concocted the potion to eternal youth. He immediately set out to search for the herbalist and get his hands on the eternal youth potion. He took long and hard journeys deep into the high mountains and finally brought back the coveted potion, the key to rejoin the immortals in heaven.
Instead of taking the potion, Ho Yi stored it away, fearing the consequences of re-entering heaven, much to the dismay of his wife who had felt consequences or not, her days on earth were done for. One day when Ho Yi was out hunting, Tsarn Er went through Ho Yi's things and found the tugged away treasure. The very moment she had the potion in her hands, footsteps of Ho Yi returning from his hunting trip were at the door. Without much time to think, she gobbled up the entire potion. She started to feel lighter and lighter, as if she had become a feather. Light as a feather, she started to float. Higher and higher, she floated toward heaven. Upon entering heaven, she was greeted with jeers and sneers by gods and immortals for stealing Ho Yi's hard-earned potion and for abandoning her husband on earth to seek her own immortality.
Tsarn Er was ashamed, so much so that she could not bear living among her disapproving peers. Being an immortal, she could not return to earth either. She averted heaven and leapt over to the moon where there was no one but cold rocks to keep her company. It is said to this day, she's still there, alone, playing a sorrowful tone on her pear-shaped five-string guitar.
Wu Kun Chopping Down the Laurel Tree 吳剛伐桂
Wu Kun had a short attention span since he was a boy. He could never finish a task and would give up in the middle of it. His parents sent him to learn carpentry. After a few weeks, he could not take the repetition of hard work any more and quitted his apprenticeship, returning home to his parents and giving up on the idea of being a carpenter. His parents had him try tradesmanship. The same result: after weeks of tedious counting of the inventory as a clerk in a medicinal herbs shop in town, he returned home without much more understanding of trades and business than he was before. His frustrated parents now pressured him to think hard about his own future, not wanting him to waste life away as a loafer. What did he want to be? One autumn night, Wu Kun looked up into the sky and saw the bright full moon. How beautiful and mysterious it was. He started to fantasize about visiting the moon and he thought to himself what could I have done to visit the moon. An idea came to him: he could be a sorcerer. With sorcery, he would be able to visit the moon. So he decided he wanted to be a sorcerer.How could he be a sorcerer? Wu Kun had heard about this old wizard living deep in the woods among the mountains clouded with fogs all year long. He set out to find the master of magic to teach him the crafts needed to become one himself. He found the wise sorcerer up on the mountain higher than the clouds. Out of curiosity, the old wizard agreed to take him on as his pupil in sorcery. First do some chores, the sorcerer ordered Wu Kun, sweeping, dusting, fetching the water from the nearby stream, and chopping the woods to make fire. Day in and day out, the old sorcerer did not mention anything about sorcery. Wu Kun, bored from his daily chores, grew impatient. He mustered up courage to ask his master why hadn't him been taught any magic tricks. Instead of a direct response his master asked him why he wanted to be a sorcerer in the first place. At this Wu Kun confided that he would like one day to visit the moon.
The wise sorcerer thought for a moment, and then with a snap of his fingers, he had transformed both him and Wu Kun onto the moon. The moon was a destitute place with rocks and very cold air. Among the rocks, there was a huge laurel tree. Wu Kun, intrigued by the presence of the tree, asked what was the tree there for. Instead of answering, his master took out an ax and asked Wu Kun to chop down the tree. Wu Kun started to work at it. After twenty or so swings at the tree, Wu Kun took a break to rest a while. To his amazement, the tree trunk where Wu Kun had been chipping away little by little appeared not have been touched at all.
Wu Kun turned to his master with an inquisitive look. The old sorcerer explained that the ax, called "three hundred hacks", was a magical one, which would not have any effect unless one kept at it for three hundred times without stopping to rest. This was your chance to persevere, the sorcerer said, and until you had the patience and strength to chop down this tree, you could not learn anything, let along wizardry. The sorcerer smiled at Wu Kun and disappeared out of sight, leaving Wu Kun alone on the moon to his challenge of perseverance.
Wu Kun resumed his chopping. He got to two hundred and fifty something hacks without stopping, which was not enough to chop down the tree. Once he stopped the tree grew back to what it was without a chip or a mark on its trunk. Frustrated, Wu Kun sat down under the tree, waiting and hoping for his master's return. The old wizard never did return. It is said till this day Wu Kun is still up there, from time to time chipping away the laurel tree, but never quite got to finish it.
***
Autumn is such a beautiful season that the Chinese celebrated it with a festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival. This year, the Mid-Autumn Festival falls on October 1st. The name "Mid-Autumn" came about because the festival falls between "the Beginning of Autumn" and "the Split of Autumn", two of the twenty four seasonal milestones used by Chinese farmers from hundreds of years ago onward to mark the climatic changes of the four seasons. In the traditional Chinese calendar, the Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth month every year.The festival came about as a celebration to autumn in Tang Dynasty (618-906 AD). After a long period of prosperity, people's mind shifted from hunger and war to arts and leisure. The educated elite of the time started to promote a festival to celebrate the beauty of autumn: the moon full and bright, the air fresh and crisp, the sky high and clear, the weather nice and cool and the laurel blossoms in full bloom fragrant and sweet. The combination inspired poets to rhyme and singers to chant. What greater excuse was there to take a break and admire the world around us? To accompany the celebration, they had tea and wine and snacked on delectable pastries.
The custom of giving and feasting on moon cakes however was said to come about from a different time and place. When Mongolians invaded China, the Sung Dynasty came to an end (around 1279 AD), Chinese people rebelled against the invading reign. The rebels decided to ambush the occupying Mongolian troops around the mid-autumn time frame. To organize the attack, they put messages of the time and place of attack on pieces of paper and stuffed them in homemade cakes and gave the cakes to friends and relatives to synchronize the attack. The moon cakes we have today do not have messages, though fortune cookies do. They have instead egg yolks inside, for egg yolks resemble the full moon. Over time, finer varieties and regional differences developed to account for today's moon cake phenomenon.
You can tell that Mid-Autumn festival is around the corner when bakeries, Chinese, Hone Kong style or Taiwanese, put out their specialty moon cakes on display and Asian supermarkets stock boxes of imported or big-chain bakery moon cakes. A box of 4 moon cakes (about one to one and a half pounds) can go from $15 to $30. Usually the more egg yolks in a cake, the more expensive it becomes. Besides egg yolks, the commonly used stuffing ranged from red bean paste, dried black dates paste, green bean paste, lotus seed paste to candied pineapple paste. Sometimes, walnut bits or pine seeds are mixed into the paste, too. There are two crust varieties, flaky or smooth. The smooth kind of crust is called Cantonese style while the flaky kind, Suzhou style. The flaky crust pastries, about 3 to 4 ounces each, go for $1 to $1.50 each, and can be found in bakeries all year round. Some bakeries, like Sheng Kee, sell a miniature version of the smooth skin moon cakes all year round.
Come this fall, won't you pick a bright moon night, brew a cup of tea, have some moon cakes and enjoy the autumn sky.