Today was Zhōngqiū Jié (中秋节), or as it’s also known – the Mid-Autumn Festival!

It’s celebrated on the “the 15th day of the 8th month on the lunar calendar” and it’s a major Chinese holiday, right behind Chinese New Year in popularity and celebration. There are many versions of the folklore behind the story, but essentially (and VERY briefly) a woman named Chang’e drank an immortal elixir and flew up into the sky, taking residence on the moon. Thus, this festival is also called the Harvest Moon Festival. It’s a time for family gatherings, with a nighttime picnic where you can gaze at the moon, give thanks, and pray for good fortune. People even go “moon” walking…no, not that kind of “moonwalking” (unfortunately), but where people take walks under the light of the full moon.

I was very excited to experience this festival here in Shanghai! That envelopment of culture was one of the reasons why I was so eager to move abroad.

But…it didn’t work out that way.

We’ll get to that in a minute.

The Mid-Autumn Festival a national holiday, which means that people were out, en masse. I made the mistake of going to Da Ren Fa (local supermarket), and it was BUSY this morning!

Reminder: NEVER go to a supermarket during a holiday in China…

If I was smart, I would have made my trip to the market the day before, but I needed to buy a mooncake! Mooncakes are traditional to the festival and a must-try. People I talked to about mooncakes this week fell into one of two camps: 1) I love them and eat them all the time, or 2) I can’t stand them. My favorite description given to me by a coworker was this: “mooncakes are like Christmas fruitcake. No one likes them, but everyone gives them as gifts.”

While there are many different varieties (bean paste, egg, nuts, etc), I have found that people who like bean paste typically like mooncakes. This made me nervous, as I’m not a fan, but try it I must! So after my daunting trek through the market, I came home with my very own mooncake. Doesn’t it look nice?!

Yes, I have Mickey Tea Time plates. 🙂

Tradition states that mooncakes are to be shared, so they are often cut into fourths. Of course, I had to off-set my potential dislike of mooncakes with something I knew I’d love…chocolate covered caramels with sea salt!

PS – Those were the very last of my salted caramels I brought with me…**sniff**!
But they lasted more than 2 months!

The verdict? I don’t like mooncakes. The wrapper was all Mandarin, so I had no idea exactly which mooncake I bought until I cut into it; egg was the inside filling. The taste and texture just weren’t my thing; very dry and yet pasty. A coworker told me that the best mooncakes came from Starbucks…which I’m guessing to mean Starbucks created a more international friendly flavor, but where’s the fun in that?!

My mooncake experience happened in the morning, but, as I said earlier, this festival is about the moon! There was one wrinkle on the day…the weather forecast was not conducive to staring at the moon. Here’s the view outside my apartment window that afternoon:

Seeing this, I should’ve just stayed home, ordered food, and watched a good movie.

Clearly, I won’t be seeing the moon tonight. But doesn’t mean the festival is over! No, there had to be something going on tonight, even if it was inside. So I decided to head over to Disney Town and see what they had planned. Little did I know that “Super” Typhoon Meranti was about to roll into town.

Oops.

This was my own fault. I checked the weather in the morning, but I didn’t think to check anything beyond the temperature and rain. So, off I set for the metro station.

Sign #1 – there were only a few scooters parked at the metro.

That should’ve been my first sign to go home. It was raining hard at this point, but no worse than what I’ve seen before. That’s why I have a poncho, right?!

So few scooters behind me!

Four short metro stops later, I’m at Disney Town at Disneyland Shanghai.

Sign #2: lots of people were leaving the park…at 6:00pm!

That one was easy to write-off…fair weather fans always leave parks early! Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing going on at Disney Town for the festival. This was disappointing, because it was decorated so beautifully! These pictures were taken earlier this week:

So, I decided to get an apple slushie at the Spoonful of Sweetness store and head back!

They call it an Apple Slushie…I would call it “Candy Apple Slushie”.
It was WAY sweeter than I anticipated! I’ll have to try the Mango one next time…

Oh boy. Did the Typhoon Meranti roll in with a vengeance at this point! By the time I got back to the metro station, it was a torrential downpour!

Why am I the only one coming out of the metro?!

I honestly debated leaving my scooter at the station and taking a cab home, but there was no available cab to be seen. So, much like my other adventures here, slow and steady is the mantra.

Head down, eyes ahead. I’m rolling along on my scooter at the sound-barrier breaking speed of 20 km/h (about 13 mph).

On the plus side, there were fewer scooters and cars out on the road so I didn’t feel like I was going to die. But now I had another worry…

…STANDING WATER!

Clearly I wasn’t going to take any pictures of my adventure home. I needed to stay focused! This picture below was taken when I first got here, but it’s a fairly accurate representation of what the roads looked like at this point. (As you can see in my pictures above, it was wet earlier, but nothing like this!)

Eventually, I made it home.

Safe and sound…if not completely drenched. A wet cat was probably dryer that I was, and that’s with my trusty poncho!

Sitting in my apartment, it’s obvious I wasn’t in the worst part of the storm. That came later, as I sat on my couch, watching the storm unfold…fresh from my shower, with warm, dry clothes on.

Luckily, Super Typhoon Meranti has since been downgraded to a Tropical Storm.

There’s always next year for the Mid-Autumn Festival. But, China and I will always have our experiences today, with Super Typhoon Meranti.

Time to dry off!