Good morning, everyone.
Today is Mid-Autumn Festival — 中秋節.
For Chinese people, this is more than a festival about mooncakes. It is about the moon, family, reunion, memories and the passing of traditions from one generation to another.
As I look at the bright moon tonight, I cannot help thinking about how much the festival has changed during my 80-plus years — and yet, in some strange way, how little it has changed.
The moon is still there.
And so are the memories.
A tradition much older than my childhood
The Mid-Autumn Festival did not actually begin in the Yuan Dynasty. Its roots go back many centuries, to ancient traditions of appreciating and worshipping the autumn moon and celebrating the harvest. It gradually developed into the festival we know today.
But the Yuan Dynasty gave mooncakes another famous chapter in their history.
According to the traditional story, during the resistance against Mongol rule near the end of the Yuan Dynasty, messages were secretly passed through mooncakes to coordinate the uprising. The story is part of the popular history surrounding the fall of the Yuan and the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, although details of the legend are difficult to separate completely from later storytelling.
Whether every detail of the story is historically certain or not, I find the idea fascinating.
A little round cake became a way of carrying a message.
Eventually, the message disappeared, but the mooncake remained.
That is how traditions sometimes survive. The original meaning may change, but the tradition continues to travel from one generation to another.
When I was a little boy
When I was a small boy, Mid-Autumn Festival was a big event.
It was not something we simply mentioned in a WhatsApp message.
We lived it.
There was good food everywhere. Fruits, meat and other special foods appeared on the table. For a child, that alone was enough to make the day exciting.
And then came the evening.
Children came out carrying their lanterns and walked together through the streets. There was laughter, excitement and noise everywhere.
I remember shops with beautifully decorated display windows. Some even had animated puppets moving inside the windows.
For a little boy, it was almost magical.
I did not understand history. I did not know much about the Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty or the stories behind the mooncakes.
I simply knew that Mid-Autumn Festival was a wonderful day.
Perhaps that is how traditions are really passed down — not through history books alone, but through childhood memories.
Eighty-plus years later
Now I am 80+.
The little boy is still somewhere inside me, but the world around him has changed dramatically.
Today, I can sit at home in Richmond Hill and send a Mid-Autumn greeting to someone thousands of kilometres away.
Instead of carrying a lantern through the street, we carry a smartphone.
Instead of waiting for a shop window to entertain us, we can watch videos and animations instantly.
Instead of sending a message hidden inside a mooncake, we can send a message through WhatsApp, Facebook and other social media.
And now we have something that would have seemed like science fiction when I was a boy — AI animation.
I can even ask my AI companion to help me create a Mid-Autumn Festival poster.
The technology has changed enormously.
But the purpose is surprisingly familiar.
We are still trying to say:
"I remember you."
"I wish you well."
"Happy Mid-Autumn Festival."
The same moon
This is what I find most interesting about getting old.
When you are young, you look forward.
When you are old, you also look backward.
And sometimes, when you look backward far enough, you realize that your past and your present are connected by things you hardly noticed at the time.
For me, one of those things is the moon.
The little boy I once was looked at the Mid-Autumn moon while carrying a lantern through the streets.
The 80+ grandpa I am today may look at the same moon while holding a smartphone.
Different times.
Different technology.
Different ways of communicating.
But perhaps the feeling is still the same.
The same moon, different times.
And maybe that is the real beauty of tradition.
We don't have to celebrate exactly as our grandparents did.
We simply have to carry something meaningful forward.
From mooncakes to messages.
From lanterns to smartphones.
From childhood memories to AI animation.
And from one generation to the next.
Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!
中秋節快樂！
May the moon be bright, the family be together, and the memories be worth keeping.
— D. Au
Grandpa Journey
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