A festival where the moon plays a shining role

Through another poem in dedication to his absent sibling, translated by late scholar Xu Yuanchong, Su's true heart was told, full vent toward what he'd learned about the vanity fair and of the concern for public affairs, hidden deeply in lines seemingly describing the most common evening scenes:

Like dreams pass world affairs untold,

How many autumns in our life are cold?

My corridor is loud with windblown leaves at night.

See my brows frown and hair turn white!

Of my poor wine few guests are proud;

The bright moon is oft veiled in cloud.

Who would enjoy with me the mid-autumn moon lonely?

Wine cup in hand, northward I look only.

More than once, alone, Su inherited the spirit of Tang Dynasty (618-907) poet Li Bai, a hearty drink taken, dancing with the moon and his moonlit shadow, or feeling as if he were riding the wind to visit the legendary palace in the moon — his spiritual home — ascending to become an immortal and removed of the troubles of the human world.

Legend has it that in the fancy crystal and jade palace of the moon reside fairy Chang'e, a rabbit, a toad and an osmanthus tree. Her husband Houyi shot down nine redundant suns to end torridity and crop failures of the world and was awarded the elixir of longevity. Chang'e swallowed the whole of the elixir secretly, floated off the ground and flew toward the moon.

A young and beautiful immortal, yet her atonement is to stroll up and down in the cold, desolate palace for eternity, solitude being her accompany, together with ceaseless labor of the rabbit and toad grinding to make futile elixirs.

Su, in the end, fed his poetry nostalgia for the human world, which he was nonetheless loath to leave, while making no secret of his anguish soothed by his optimism, passion and generosity.

It's always the duality, either in Su's literary works or of all those well-known ancient legends about the moon, that makes the day evocative, apart from the serving of mooncakes and lantern exhibitions, family gatherings, feasts and ceremonial admiration of the full moon.

An unchangeable cycle emerges with the moon's ever-changing wax and wane. Alongside its delicacy and serenity as it usually impresses people with, the moon lets out its power and grandeur every now and then.

Around new moon and full moon, when the sun, the Earth and the moon stand almost in a straight line, the gravitational pull of the sun and moon lifts the tides on Earth to their maximal range.