明月几时有？中秋节 - Mid-Autumn Festival

明月几时有？把酒问清天。
不知天上宫阙，今夕是何年。
我欲乘风归去。惟恐琼楼玉宇，高处不胜寒，起舞弄清影，何似在人间。

转朱阁，低绮户，照无眠。

不应有恨，何事长向别时圆？
人有悲欢离合，月有阴晴圆缺，此事古难全。

但愿人长久，千里共婵娟。

This is one of my favorite chinese poems written by Su Dong Puo from the northern Song dynasty in the 11th century and one of the few that I can still recite by heart.

The Mid-Autumn Festial also known as Moon Festival is rather a big holiday here in China (it fell on a Sunday this year and workers get Monday off) always falls on the 15th day of 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar, where the whole family gather together to celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season and admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, have a feast and eat moon cakes. I kind see it like the Thanksgiving holiday in the USA where everyone in the family try to be together to celebrate and eat a lot.

We don't always have our loved ones by our side at the holidays, and this poem was written to express the sentiment of missing our loved ones.

I will attempt to translate the essentiels of the poem in English.

When I would I see the full moon? Holding up a glass of wine, I ask the heaven.
Not knowing up there in the heavenly palace, what year it is for them.

I want to ride the wind up to the heaven, but afraid of chill and loneliness up there, what heavenly palace can compare to the life on earth with my loved ones.

The moonlight is flooding into the window, which makes me very sad.

The shining moon should not have any loathing, but why it is always full when my loved ones have gone away.

People come and people go, we cannot always be together, just like there is the crescent moon and there is the full moon and there is even no moon sometimes; it has been like this since the beginning of the days, nothing we can do about.

I only wish that although we cannot always be together, my loved ones are always healthy and out of harms way; we might be thousands of miles and always apart, but we can always admire the same shining full moon.

So I wish for all my families and friends at the distant land, this holiday season and all other days - happy, safe and healthy (幸福平安).