The moon is at its fullest tonight!

When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in worship of the Creator. – Mahatma Gandhi

The Moon like a flower
In heaven’s high bower,
With silent delight,
Sits and smiles on the night. –William Blake

BEIJING, China – Tonight should be a festive occasion for moon-lovers, romantics, poets and nature lovers to go out and gaze at the night sky, because the moon will be at its fullest.

Peoples of different cultures have looked at the moon either in anxiety, irrational fear, awe, reverence or worship. Here in Beijing, there’s an ancient Moon Temple that was built by the Ming Dynasty emperor for the sole purpose of providing the royal family members a place to worship the moon.

Family Reunions, Mooncakes And Romance

Tonight is the 15th day of the eighth lunar month in the ancient Chinese calendar called Zhong Zhu Jie, or Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrated all over the Far East. Asians as well as Chinese here in China or scattered across the world will mark this happy occasion with family reunions and the eating of mooncakes. Many families play an ancient parlor game known in Hokkien as Pwa Tiong-Chiu, which uses dice and allows participants to win mooncakes, prizes and other foodstuffs. For many Asians, this is the second most important traditional festival next to the Lunar New Year.

For me, this Mid-Autumn Festival is most auspicious because I’m with a group of 100 top overseas Chinese leaders in business, civic activities, science and technology, art, law and other fields from 20 countries in Asia, North America, Europe, Oceania and South America. The leaders are touring northern and southern China as government guests. In the group from the Philippines are Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Robert Go, the Sy Gaisano retail clan’s Geraldine Gaisano and her husband Alfie Co Anggala, George Siy and myself representing the Anvil Business Club, among others.

What is most exciting is that I was able to convince my girlfriend to fly from Canada to join me on this tour as a unique two-week date with her. My GF told me that some of her fellow Cantonese people consider the Mid-Autumn Festival the equivalent of Valentine’s Day. I think it’s not true, because there’s a different festival for that.

It is no coincidence that there are hundreds of love songs which were written with the moon as the inspiration. Ludwig van Beethoven in 1801 created his masterpiece Moonlight Sonata, Elvis Presley and before him Louis Armstrong helped immortalize a popular 1934 love song created by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart called Blue Moon. I think it was Henry Mancini or Andy Williams who popularized Moon River.

Frank Sinatra had his Fly Me to the Moon, Sting has Moon over Bourbon Street and Beneath a Desert Moon, Paul McCartney has C Moon, Leon Parker in 1994 remade the old song It’s Only a Paper Moon, Paul Simon had his Song about the Moon, Electric Light Orchestra in 1981 had Ticket to the Moon, Elton John created Bad Side of the Moon, and Savage Garden had To the Moon and Back. One of the most famous Mandarin songs here in China and throughout Asia, and which Mother Lily asked Zsa Zsa Padilla to sing here in Beijing two years ago for Mano Po 3, is Ye-liang Tay-piao Wo Te Shin or The Moon Represents my Heart.

This moon-gazing and mooncake-eating festival is also coincidentally the wedding anniversary of my late parents; my dad who was a widower in his mid-50s and my mom who was a widow already nearing 40 years. If the magic of the moon had not struck their hearts with love again, I wouldn’t have been born!

Symbol Of Hope

Still on the mysteries of the moon, I recall my late teacher mom timed her purchase of seafood at the wet market according to the lunar calendar. As a kid, I was mystified at how an ancient calendar system from China could guide a housewife to ascertain the dates when the seafood in Quezon City’s palengke would be lower. Years later, this skeptic learned that during the full moon, more fish come up near the surface of water, allowing fishermen bigger catch, thus lower seafood prices. I recall hearing that the anti-colonial revolutionary Honorio Lopez, who had a street named after him in Tondo district of Manila, once devised his own version of a moon-based calendar guide used by local fishermen.

Skeptics will complain about my waxing romantic about the moon. They could, of course, argue that the word lunatic is connected to the moon and its reputed strange effect on the sanity of humans. They could even point out the coincidence that luna is the Spanish word for moon, and that our top painter Juan Luna went berserk with jealous rage in France and murdered his wife and mother-in-law in a so-called crime of passion. They could argue that werewolves or other spooky creatures of horror fables are said to be affected by the moon!

It’s not only because I’m a hopeless romantic that I love the moon, nor because I’m ethnic Chinese. I’m not like the lunatic genius Chinese poet Li Po of the Tang Dynasty. He died 1,243 years ago, drowning in the Yellow River after having too much liquor and trying to embrace the reflection of the moon on board a boat!

I love the moon, because it is just so stunningly beautiful as it illuminates the dark nights. For our forebears, it was a mystery why the moon at different dates in a monthly cycle changed in shape and brightness – growing, evolving, completely losing itself in the black of night, then followed by the certainty of a new moon – symbolizing our human experiences of birth, life, death and rebirth. Let us love, hope and celebrate the sublime beauty of the full moon tonight!

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