Moon Musings: Thoughts on the Moon Festival - 中秋節

by Charles DeBenedetto

(An artist’s interpretation of the character 閒. Photo Credit: Hanzi Alive)

Today is the Moon Festival, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival. The day when we look at the full moon, barbeque outside, and take time to be with family and friends.

The holiday reminds me of a Chinese character: 閒. Some characters are incredibly complex, but this one is profoundly simple. It is the character for idleness, or rest. The standard transliteration is “xián,” with a rising tone, although it would be better to write it as “she-én.” The outside part, 門, represents a doorway, while the inside part, 月, represents the Moon. A moon inside the door? What does that mean?

It means the Moon is outside, and you can see it through the doorway because you are inside. It is night. The work is done. Finally, you can rest your feet, and, with nothing to do, just admire the beauty of the Moon. Looking at the Moon is the symbol of leisure, and which better Moon to look at than the full Moon?

The Moon Festival is a harvest festival. The crops have been gathered, the grain houses filled, animals raised, and the cruel winter is fast approaching. We should probably save and ration what we have for a more difficult day, but we don’t. We slaughter the animals, barbeque far too many plants and animals, and drink too much beer. We celebrate that we have worked hard and our labor has been rewarded. We’ll deal with the cold winter later.

The Moon Festival is a reunion festival. Uncles and aunts, relatives close and distant, all come together, bringing something to contribute to the feast. We realize that when we sacrifice together, we gain much more than we ever could alone. We are all so busy, always working, but today, we are 閒 together. Nothing to do but look at the Moon through the doorway, and isn’t it beautiful, when you actually stop to look at it for more than a glance?

The Moon Festival is an outdoor festival. Outside at night, feel the comfortable breeze that is winter’s warning. Soon you’ll board the windows shut, bundle up in layers of clothes and piles of blankets. But you don’t need hot pot or spicy soup tonight, you just need a cold beer in one hand, and an iron tongs in the other to flip meat, corn on the cob, and whatever else the big family brought together.

The Moon Festival is a short festival. It is not two weeks, like Chinese New Year’s, but it doesn’t need to be, because the weather is not so cold yet as to test our faith in the eventual second-coming of our savior: Spring. No, it is four days because all we need is to see the results of our labor, to see that our work has been fruitful, and to motivate us to keep going so that, hopefully one day soon, we can laugh, drink, and be 閒 together once more.

The East is “Turtle-Slow”: Thoughts from Turtle Island - 龜山島

by Charles DeBenedetto

(View of Turtle Island. Photo Credit: K.H.) 

The Pacific Ocean is to our left, and tall, green mountains are to our right. The skinny highway cuts through the small patch of space between them reserved for humans. I’m wearing sunglasses on top of my glasses, which looks stupid but prevents the scorching Sun from burning through my retinas.

A sign for a lighthouse and the easternmost point of Taiwan brings us to a sudden stop, and we turn off the highway and onto a narrow uphill road. Curved mirrors help us to see if anyone is coming down, but, the way the cars and scooters zoom past us, I don’t think they are looking at them. On the hillside are small structures with white pillars and family names on top. Some have Christian crosses, while many have Buddhist imagery on them. They are family crypts, given the best real-estate so that the departed can be pacified by the Pacific for all eternity. I read some of the names. The Li family. The Wu family. The Yang family. In death, as in life, Taiwanese families stick together.

 

(It looked a lot like this. Photo Credit: dreamstime.com)

Driving past the crypts to the top of the hill, we park our car and get our umbrellas ready to block the Sun. It’s windy, threatening to make our umbrellas “bloom” (The Chinese word for when the wind makes your umbrella fold inside out), but we keep control. The lighthouse is rather stout, but, already being perched on a hilltop, I don’t suppose it needs to be much higher. It’s closed to the public, so we cannot go in, but there is a fence on the edge that we can climb to look over the vegetation and out at the ocean. Climbing up, we gape at what we see.

The ocean is shades of blue: a shallower, lighter blue and a deeper, darker blue. A few birds get lost in the cotton ball clouds, and the ocean is the sky’s mirror. And in the foreground, only about nine kilometers or so away, an island like a giant turtle, lazily swimming in the water. It has a small, slightly pointed head, a rather large, angled shell, and little feet, too. It is both adorable and powerful, and we are captivated by it.

I don’t know for sure, but I imagine the indigenous people of Taiwan must have worshipped it. Perhaps they thanked it whenever they caught fish. Perhaps they feared it, believing that it would attack them if they got too close to it. But over time, they realized it would not hurt them, and so came to believe that it was protecting them from typhoons and other dangers from the sea. Maybe some people even watched it every day, to see if it would move. I certainly would have. And then, after years of watching, it would be concluded that the Great Turtle never moves because it is so diligent in its duty of protecting Taiwan.

As we drive along the coast, I keep looking over at it, to make sure that it is still there, and that it still looks like a turtle.  I think about the “World Turtle,” the origin story about how a giant turtle holds the entire world on its back. Maybe Turtle Island is the World Turtle’s baby? So it carries its baby along with everything else on its shell, too.

No matter how it got there or what it means, I think that Turtle Island is a symbol for the slower pace of life along Taiwan’s east coast. While people in Taipei and Taichung are flying through red lights and cutting people off, on the east coast we can spend all day looking at the ocean, and all night sitting around a low-table enjoying the saltwater breeze and gazing at stars that west-coasters have never seen before. Life here is turtle slow.

The main path from Taipei to the east is the Xue Shan Tunnel, which cuts 13 kilometers through one of the many mountains that surround Taipei. The moment you emerge from the tunnel, Turtle Island is there to welcome you, floating lazily, encouraging you to slow down. And when it is time to go back home, Turtle Island is the last thing you’ll see before the darkness of the tunnel reminds you that you are returning to the fast frenzy of life on the west coast. Hopefully, its fleeting image will remind you to take some of the calm of the east back with you to your frantic life on the west.

Dragon Boats on Land: A Surreal Twist on an Ancient Culture - 陸上龍舟競賽

by Charles DeBenedetto

            
     (Our dragon boats looked similar to these. Photo Credit: nsysu.edu.tw)

We are very close to what would have been the end of the semester, had it not been for, well, you know. Having delayed the spring semester by two weeks back in February, we are paying for it now, as we will continue to teach until mid-July.

(Side-note: Having to teach an extra two weeks is extremely inconsequential, in respect to how disruptive to normal life the virus has been in other parts of the world. I am fortunate and lucky.)

Mid-July is the time when Taiwan gets so hot as to be practically unlivable, and, as a result of that heat, many Taiwanese would normally travel to places like Japan, Europe, Canada, or, better yet, wintry places like Australia and New Zealand.

Obviously, though, we will not be travelling abroad this summer.

Without international travel as the finish line, it can feel especially daunting to finish the semester. Already I am counting how many classes left to teach before the summer holiday. When I clock-in, a robotic voice happily says “thank you,” and I appreciate it, thanking me for braving the heat and sweating at red lights on my little scooter to get here. And then the “thank you” at the end of the day is truly a trumpet fanfare, congratulating me on the successful completion of another work day. This late in the semester though, the “thank you” loses its potency.

There is a custom in Taiwan that I have found hard to acclimate to. When there is a long weekend coming up, you must have class on the Saturday prior, to “make-up” for time lost during the holiday. Back home, I imagine if schools tried to do this, then students would riot and the principal would be captured and duct-taped to the monkey bars, but here it is accepted as normal. But then, being so overworked before the holiday comes, you almost spitefully don’t want it, until of course you finally get there, and you triumphantly clock-out and ride your scooter into the sunset, singing “Vacation all I ever wanted” by the Go-Go’s.

That’s the backstory, anyway. So, after working nine out of the past ten days, I clock-in, get my “thank you,” and walk in with a slightly lighter step at the thought of the upcoming holiday. My temperature is taken, and one of my students giddily sprays disinfectant into my awaiting hands. As I walk in, I notice a strange sight.

Sprawled across the green field, four long, inflated yellow dragons, each with eight pairs of handles for people to grip while they straddle them. Complete with long black mustaches and googly eyes, they look cartoonish, and, laying on their sides, they look tired. Beside them, there are smaller, inflated orange caterpillars with six sets of handles.

The school bell rings, and the students slowly coalesce on the quad.

“Attention!” The booming voice of the student affairs administrator quiets all chatter among the students.

He explains that there will be four teams, comprised of students from grades one to five, and that all grades will use the caterpillar, except grade five, who will use the big dragon. The goal? Get your dragon (or caterpillar) across the quad, get off so the next grade can begin, back and forth until all the grades in your team have completed the relay.

The students get in position and the first graders straddle their caterpillars.

“Ready…go!”

Hopping desperately, they bounce up and down, but do not move forward. I encourage my team. “Don’t sit! Stand up and walk!” But their little legs cannot touch the ground! Quickly thinking, myself and the other teachers on our team help lift the caterpillar so they can move. One teacher pulls the caterpillar's head so hard that I am afraid it is going to pop off. Finally, they make it across, but the second graders are equally unable to move.

By the time it’s the third graders’ turn, we are so tired that we can barely cheer them on. Third and fourth grade goes by fine, until finally it’s time for the fifth graders to ride the enormous dragon. The dragon is designed for adults, so again the teachers move in to help. Summoning Herculean strength, one teacher pulls on the dragon mustache so hard that one half of it pops off! “Oh no, I think we rented these,” was my first thought. Finally, we bring them across the finish line.

 After the students are done, the teacher’s race is announced. Apprehensively, I straddle the caterpillar (yes, we decided the ride the caterpillar), sitting at the second position. In front of me, a Taiwanese homeroom teacher, a muscular man with a large straw hat to block the Sun. As the race begins, nobody keeps count for us, so we find our rhythm slowly, awkwardly. I scramble, and struggle to keep in-sync with the teachers in front and behind me. We go torpedo-fast, and I am terrified of falling out of step and tumbling off the damn thing. We make it across the quad, turn around and charge back toward the school as if we are invaders trying to break in with a battering ram. Passing the cone that symbolizes the finish line, we collapse on the ground. I didn’t even see who won, but I laughed at the absurdity of it all, and felt camaraderie with my team for sharing this ridiculous experience together.

Sprawled out on the grass, we have already expended all of the precious energy that we normally ration throughout the working day.

Winners are announced, prizes are distributed, and, the event being formally over, the first graders begin to pile on the big dragon, unable to contain their excitement. Sitting on the front half of the dragon now, and feeling mischievous, myself and some of the other teachers jump high into the sky. Upon landing, the force of our butts shoots the little first graders off of the tail end, followed by high-pitched shrieks and giggles. It’s a wonderful moment, but soon the bell rings again, the kids obediently shuffle into their classrooms, the dragons and caterpillars are deflated and rolled up, and a normal school day commences. 

* * *

Even though the day was normal after that, it did energize me to get through the last day of classes before the long holiday. More importantly, it made me feel connected to my coworkers and my students. All of this to celebrate the beginning of the Dragon Boat Festival, a Chinese tradition dating back thousands of years where traditionally people will race dragon boats, which are long and can seat many rowers, and are painted ornately to look like dragons.

The inflatable dragon boats that we used are not part of mainstream Taiwanese culture, but merely something fun that my school chose to do. Perhaps they will catch on in the future, but for now the actual dragon boats in the water are still the dominant culture. That being said, if the ancient Chinese are looking down, and if they can see the inflatable dragon/caterpillar shenanigans at my school, they might faint and fall off their clouds. But all cultures change in subtle ways over time, the most ancient perhaps being the most susceptible to change.