Moon Festival

After New Year's, the second most celebrated event in the Chinese calendar is the Moon Festival.  As a result a lot of people were on holiday today.  YangShuo's streets were literally swarming with people and to get anywhere you either had to walk, cycle or get a motorbike taxi.

Tonight we had tickets to see a Light Show, which meant that we had to get motorbike taxi's.  There are 2 things I need to point out:

1) I was wearing a skirt, which meant I had to sit side saddle

2) There was no helmet

I spent the entire journey to the Light Show, clutching on for dear life to the jacket of the driver, counting down the minutes till we reached our destination.  Time seemed to move in slow motion, particularly when the driver decided to weave between 2 cars and completely cut off another car, which missed hitting us by what can only have been a fraction of a second.

Teacher on the other hand was the complete opposite.  When I felt brave enough to actually look up, I saw her whiz past on her motorbike taxi, completely unfazed and touching up her make-up.  I wish I had a picture, but that would have meant letting go of the driver to fish out my phone from my bag, which wasn't going to happen.

The Light Show was one of the most bizarre experiences on this trip so far; the Chinese singing was quite high pitched and sounded like cats wailing.  Yet the depiction of the legend of the moon goddess, Chang-O, was visually stunning:

Legend has it that there was a hero named Yi who was excellent at shooting.  His wife was Chang-O.  One year the ten suns rose in the sky together, causing great disaster to people.  Yi shot down nine of the suns and left only one to provide light.

An immortal admired Yi and sent him the elixir of immortality. Yi did not want to leave Chang-O and be immortal without her, so he let Chang-O keep the elixir.

But Feng Meng, one of his apprentices knew this secret.  So on the 15th August in the lunar calendar, whilst Yi was hunting, Feng Meng broke into Yi's house and forced Chang-O to give him the elixir.

Chang-O refused and instead swallowed it and flew into the sky.  Since she loved her husband and wanted to be near him, she chose the moon as her residence.  When Yi came back and learnt what had happened, he felt so sad that he displayed Chang-O's favourite fruits and cakes in the yard as sacrifices.  Others learnt about this and as they were sympathetic, they also put up fruits and cakes as a sacrifice.