Moon Festival Evening Tea

"May we live long and share the beauty of the moon together, even if we are a hundred miles apart."

~ Unknown poet

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On September 27 many people around the world will be celebrating the Moon Festival also known as the Harvest Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival.

Traditional celebrations take place on this date in China and other neighboring Asian countries. The Chinese have celebrated the harvest during the autumn full moon since the Shang Dynasty (16th to 10th century B.C.)

Moon Cakes are eaten on this night and given as gifts to family members and hosts. They are cut into wedges and served with tea. 

Typically moon cakes are sold in tin squares and are individually wrapped.

The fat content is epic! Many cakes are filled with lotus bean paste and an egg yolk. It doesn't take many wedges to fill your appetite.

Not a great photo...but this is a photo I took in 2003 in the Sichuan area of China during the week of the Moon Festival. From train stations to malls, moon cakes were sold everywhere. Here is a typical display-so many varieties!

Please join me outside as we celebrate the Moon Festival with a traditional evening tea. The sunlight is slowly leaving and we can light lanterns to illuminate our tea.

Lanterns in Hong Kong I admired.

Tea will be served on Aynsley placemats which were a wedding present. The pattern is Pembroke.

Chrysanthemum tea will be served in my new Blue Willow patterned Sadler teapot. I bought this without giving much thought to the dimensions. When I read that it was a two cup pot, I assumed as a tea lover it would be much larger. :)

The detail is beautiful.

Embossed and signed bottom

Please help yourself to a double happiness cup

and a moon cake.

"The moon is at her full, and riding high

Floods the calm fields with light

The airs that hovers in the summer sky

are all asleep to-night."

~William Cullen Bryant

Enjoy the beauty of the upcoming autumn moon!

~Nora