In Continuum.

Imaginary Insects

The moon is not only beautiful
It is so far away
The moon is not only ice cold
It is here to stay

On the fifteenth of every eighth lunar month, it is a festival that every Chinese knows about. The mid-autumn festival is considered the second biggest event on a Chinese calendar, right under the other important date called the Chinese New Year. The Mid-autumn festival, or the Mooncake festival, has been a tradition ever since the Xia and Shang dynasty in China, more than four thousand years ago. Through time, the stories and the origins of this day has been greatly distorted and changed, but the basic practices have yet to alter despite the long period of time. There are a dozen different stories I have heard about why we have to eat mooncakes on this day, or why we have to carry lanterns on this special day of the year. But whatever it is, I guess it is a great opportunity for everybody to take life a little less seriously than usual, like what the gang did last Friday at Kerri's.

Before I reveal the details though, here is a little story about how the Mid-autumn festival came about - based completely on my vague memory of the primary school history textbook. Anyway, there was a man named Houyi, and he had a wife named Chang-er. Both of them work in a Jade Palace in Heaven, and both of them are immortals when they were born. The bunch of idiots in the Jade Palace got jealous of their immortality one day, and banished them from the Jade Palace into the human world. So the love birds arrived on Earth and no longer retained their immortality. So they started hunting for food, which was where Houyi learned his incredible skills as an archer.

When i lay me down
Will you still be around
When they put me six feet underground
Will the big bad beautiful you be around

Back in those days, the Earth had ten bloody suns surrounding us, one every ten days. Please be reminded that this is merely a folklore, told from grandmothers to grandchildren, so on and so forth until it no longer resembles anything that we learn in the science textbook these days. But anyway, let's just stretch our imaginations for a while, and pretend that there were ten bloody suns in the skies back then. Houyi found it to be incredibly hot back then, so he decided to shoot down nine suns to keep just one in the skies - he was afraid of the dark, perhaps. Anyway, so some heavenly figure was grateful of his work for mankind, and thus gave him a pill that is supposed to make him an immortal again. However, he needed to take the pill in a specific time of the year with some kind of training involved prior to consuming the pill. So before Houyi ate the pill, he hid it under his pillow and went along with the training to make himself eligible for the pill. Then of course, the woman of the story ruined everything.

The busy-bodied Chang-e danced into his room one day and found the pill under his pillow, and was probably incredibly hungry back then. After all, Houyi was training for his eligibility for the pill deep in the jungles, and probably forgot to use his awesome archery skills to hunt for some wild deer or boars. She ate the pill that was underneath the pillow, and she gained superpowers right afterwards. She floated out of the bedroom window, and Houyi chased after her on foot. Chang-e floated and floated, and she eventually floated herself onto the moon with a horde of crazed rabbits minding their own businesses in the wilderness. She choked on the sight of the crazed rabbits, and managed to cough out a part of the immortality pill, which was used as an ingredient on the rabbits' part to make the whole pill again. The rabbits are still making the damn pill for the selfish Chang-e to return to Earth just to see her husband once every year on this day, which is also why the moon is so round on this day. The Yang of the circle is the palace that Houyi built, and the Yin is the palace that Chang-e built on the moon. While they happily dance in the starry skies, the rabbits labor away on the surface of the barren moon, cursing under their breaths about Chang-e's stupidity.

Everyone says they know you
Better than you know who
Everyone says they own you
More than you do

Some may think that the above story is beautiful, while I think it has a rather sexist tone to it. After all, I have read too many Chinese literature and folklore, with the women in the stories doing incredibly stupid things. I guess it was only convenient to put women in that situation, because they didn't actually have the kind of equality they have these days. But anyway, I hardly think that the above story is in the mind of anybody these days, while they are busy trying out different flavors of the mooncakes, or playing with lanterns underneath the stars and the moon. Not to mention how the general public would unleash the arsonist in them, and start to burn the leftover lanterns and the candles, throwing them into the air like black confetti and see those ashes come raining down on ourselves like black snow. Yeah, on this day, when you are overdosed on mooncakes, people do become a little eccentric.

Kerri invited us over last Friday for a gathering at her place, with sparklers, whistling rockets, candles and a whole bunch of mooncakes jam-packed into the schedule. With the opportunity to mess around with pyrotechnics, it was a chance that I couldn't pass out on. So the decision was made to head down to her house after school last Friday to mess around with those fires and be silly children all over again. At least that is how I felt like, when I was presented with a a box choked with sparklers and other fireworks. It was a childhood dream come true, and I could see myself dancing deep into the night with sparklers in my hands, smiling like a doped idiot with leftover mooncakes in my mouth. Still, that possibility did not stop me from lighting up a bunch of those beautiful sparkling sticks and watch them burn slowly into the night, leaving a trail of smoke like the tail of an animal, so rare that it appears for as long as the fire is willing to burn, and disappears silently into a bush.

When I lay me down
Will you still be around
When they put you six feet underground
Will the big bad beautiful moon be around

It was my first time with the whistling rockets, and I was never allowed to touch those supposedly dangerous toys when I was younger. I had one of those party poppers that blew out confetti when you pull a string at the back of the cone, and that was the closest I've ever got to something that explodes - save for my sister, who erupts. So Efei was my tutor that night, the very same man that managed to set fire to the school toilet and was ultimately kicked out of the school - my school. Anyway, so he gave me a rough tutorial on how to pull the strings, and when to let go of the rockets. His specific instruction was to hold on to the stick while I pulled on the string, even when the fire begins to emerge at the back of the rocket. And when the whistling sound begins, let go of the stick and it will soar up into the sky. As the maniac that I am, I failed to follow his instructions and did everything that I wasn't supposed to do. I held on to the stick throughout the ignition process, and the rocket blasted a jet of fire into my right arm as it rocketed into the night sky. I could feel the slight pinch of pain in my arms even after the incident, but damn was it a great first experience. I wanted to shoot off another one, but Kerri's mother got upset. We stopped the rocketing, and started the attempt of burning a hole in the table.

We sat around the table then, with six candles burning before our faces and lighted them up like our own customized lanterns. We lid lanterns and hung them around the house, jabbing the sticks in between the bricks that made up the exteriors of the house. It was a peaceful sight then, to see those lanterns glowing softly in the night, with the fire flickering within the paper that surrounded it like a warm embrace. It was untouchable by the breeze that kissed our faces then, but the fuel soon burned out and all was plunged into darkness once more. But we kept burning those candles at the table, lighting up one sparkler after another until they were all burned out of shape. The leftover lanterns that were not used, became the toys between Shen, Kerri and I, as we started lighting them up one by one. We watched as the fire slowly consumed those colorful papers, seeing the ashes float up into the skies like fireflies. Like the life of one, they lasted only for such a short period of time, and was gone. But still, it was a peaceful feeling sitting there at the table with a great company, witnessing the birth and death of an imaginary insect. It was a comfortable night, a comfortable house amidst a group of comfortable people. I found a place then, and it was more than just a people I hang out with often, but also a group of people who took me in as I am - even if I make strange analogies between burning lanterns and fireflies. They accepted me, for who I am. And I was glad.

'Cause the moon is not only beautiful
It is so far away
The moon is not only ice cold
It is here to stay

We didn't burn a hole through the table, but we did manage to make a mess out of it. The glass surface was covered in a layer of tar, and the water from the swimming pool didn't help at all. But Kerri was cool about it, telling us that she would clean up the mess when we are gone. The rest of the night was spent mostly on the sofa, trying desperately to open my eyes just so that I'd be able to help myself onto a cab on the way home. It was getting late, and there was something about admiring imaginary fireflies and burning lanterns that was particularly exhausting. We called it a night, and promised to meet on the following Monday. Of course, that is going to be the case for a lot of Mondays in the future, and Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, and a whole lot of other weekdays and weekends as well. That was a comforting thought, despite the inevitable separation that I foresee at the end of the course. It is about three years away, and it is going to go by without us knowing it at all. To capture the moments, to grab hold of an instant. That is when I realized that I had to start blogging again, start reminding myself of the emotions and feelings that ran through my head in a specific place and time. Because the comfort that I felt with this admirable group of people, may be the only time in my life when I can call a bunch of friends - my family.

Everyone says they know you
Better than you know who
Everyone says they own you
More than you do