mid-autumn festival – WilfridWong.com

How We Celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival

Out of the blue, my sister called me at work yesterday. Everyone at the bench area turned to me as I was speaking in Cantonese. Yes, I am bilingual. If you are to count my half baked Spanish, I am quasi-multilingual.

Quickly, I moved into a phone booth as I battled – mentally speaking – on how to react to my sister’s for lack of a better word, ‘ambush’. An ambush with a good intend no doubt. Perhaps as one gets older, one prefers to plan ahead. Like my mother who called me while I was watching The Voice on TV half an hour ago. She asked, “What time are you going to arrive in Hong Kong?” I shrugged and looked at Cynthia for help. Then my mother asked, “Which day and what time are you leaving Hong Kong?” Even Cynthia, my travel organizer, struggled to remember the booking information.

Back to yesterday, inside the phone booth, my sister proposed that we should – in a few hours’ time – have a reunion dinner and honor the tradition of Mid-Autumn Festival. Jolly good. But what would happen to the defrost meat that we were going to cook in the evening? And my home was in a total mess. Time, yes we need time to plan doing something, or even doing nothing.

Eventually, we worked through the logistics. Our close to two years old niece Bethany is adorable. When she says hi and bye, those moments melt our hearts. And she is able to address me properly in Cantonese! I have been waiting for this moment for months. Months! My sister said that they may not need to send Bethany for a music appreciation class. They can send her to my home instead. I tried to play guitar with her. Getting a sustained attention from a kid for more than half a minute is hard. Asking her not to yank the strings off my beloved Spanish guitar is even harder. I am a patience man. In my vision, I am still seeing Bethany playing a grand piano, rather than a Spanish guitar.

After dinner, we popped by a playground in our condo. To be frank, I have not stepped inside the playground after all these years of living here. The noticeboard says that the playground is strictly for children under 12 years of age. Since Bethany was with us, we happily stepped into the playground for the first time.

Our niece seemed to have a good time. The amount of time parents have to spent in order to play and to take care of their kids is mind blowing. I salute all the parents in this world, including mine. Mark, if you are reading this, I salute you too as you are going to have your little one later this year. Years of repetitive dailies await. Speaking as such, our band’s guitarist’s newborn should be due soon. I am seeing babies spawning all around me.

In last year’s Mid-Autumn Festival, Cynthia and I were in Hong Kong crawling through the museums. Our trip to Lamma Island seems so far away. How time flies. How time flies indeed.

Mid-Autumn Festival – Museum Crawling In Hong Kong

Today is Mid-Autumn Festival. For the single guys out there, may the space rabbit grant you a ticket to moon and meet the immortal maiden, Chang’e. As for me, I have waited long enough and have decided that someone from Earth would do. Talking about the moon, today Cynthia and I have visited the Hong Kong Space Museum and have watched the ultra realistic space video clip called “Cosmic Collisions” at the huge dome shaped Sky Theater. Inside this documentary clip, it is said that when Earth was at its infancy, a rock smashed onto its surface and sent billions and millions of small pieces into space. Within a month, these small pieces consolidated into one huge rock. That rock has become our Moon. Incredible! And the Moon in turn gives the Earth tidal waves. Such a romantic notion. Perhaps that was where Italo Calvino drew his inspiration from, when he wrote that fascinating “Cosmicomics” and a few others.

The last time I have visited the Space Museum, I was a small kid. The museum seems to have shrunk in size as I grow bigger. Wednesday is a good day for museum crawling in Hong Kong. Free admission for all the museums.

We have visited the Hong Kong Museum of Art next door too. There are ancient Chinese drawings that are painted on a thin horizontal stripe of paper that seems to extend indefinitely. Landscape drawings with paths and stationary objects and people that lead your eyes from one end of the painting to another end. There are vertical drawings too. The same concept that leads our attention from the bottom to the top, which is often the mountain top and the cloud. During our visit, there is a special exhibition of the late Wu Guanzhong. The theme is “Lofty Integrity”. It is eye opening to see Chinese culture incorporated into modern art. Each painting comes with a poetic short description, which I appreciate a great deal. The title of the painting illustrated above is “Leaving Youth Behind”, courtesy of Hong Kong Museum of Art. The translated description is as follows. If you come across an exhibition of Wu Guanzhong, don’t miss it.

When a tree is old, its roots are exposed. When a lotus is old, its stalks break. It is better to break than to submit, leaving no regrets even when youth is gone.

On a lighter note, there is an exhibition called “The Ultimate South China Travel Guide” that attempts to recreate the history of Canton after the First Opium War (1839) in an entertaining manner. I felt as though I was transported back to that era. There is even a phrase book that translates the “Chinese Pidgin English” (a distorted form of English frequently spoken by the locals back then). From the obvious ones such as I no know and I no understand, to the obscure ones such as give dog chow-chow (give it to the dog) and my hap sick (I am sick). One day, if there is a phrase book for Singlish (a distorted form of English frequently spoken by the Singaporeans I suppose?), I wonder what would people think of cannot also can?