The Chinese Moon Festival

It falls on the 15th day of the 8th moon every lunar calendar year. The Chinese Moon Festival - or perhaps it is better and more romantically known as the Full Moon Festival or the Moon Cake Festival. It is considered one of the more important holidays of the year for the Chinese and as such, you can expect there are many stories attached to it, without knowing which is really right or wrong - it's just up to how practical you are, or romantic or even whether you just happen to be falling into or out of love!

As far as I can remember, the version my Grandma and my old Aunties gave me is that the 15th is mid-autumn and in the old farming times in China, mid-autumn means the end of the Year of the Harvest. Usually, we pray that it is bountiful and that's a reason for the Family to get together, to have a good meal and to thank the Gods for the blessings bestowed on us through the Year. The Family would gather at a 'round' table which is a 'circle', which signifies 'complete'. Even the words in Chinese sound the same "Yuan" in Mandarin and "Yuen" in Cantonese.

Now a little story on the more romantic side! There was supposed to be a Chinese beauty named "Zhang Er" who instead of giving in to a marriage she disliked took off from Earth and escaped to the moon one night. Her Hero followed with bow and arrow in arm to protect her. They arrived at the moon and lived happily ever after! (Now, how and why did she fly is really out of my memory now but if you really want to investigate, I'm sure there are a thousand and one different versions you can find.) Hence, another reason for celebrating the moon festival is for lovers who are together too on mid-autumn's night. They walk paths lined with festive lanterns hung to guide moon-gazers to the best moon-viewing spots - often places like The Peak. They believe the moon is perfectly round that night, the brightest and if you really look carefully at the moon and believe, you will actually see the blue shadows of Zhang Er in her flimsy costume in flight while her Hero stands by with bow and arrow in hand

Well, this is what young kids believe (the lavish food that usually goes with the feast, especially the moon cakes (also round to symbolize 'completion' for everyone) helps a lot to make the blue shadows easier to identify! Then at last, one good day, the Astronauts (was it the Americans or the Russian first?) landed on the Moon and the years of worship for Zhang Er and her hero for the Chinese were immediately dashed to pieces! Gratefully, the Chinese can forget what they want to forget quite easily. Years have gone by now but we still celebrate the Moon Festival all the same. The whole Family gathering around the round table to share the sumptuous food together is already a blessing itself. And young lovers still find every opportunity to go out to some scenic spot to get a good view of the full moon and make promises and vows for sharing a life together and to live happily ever after!

Hey, where have I gone? Surely, I'm not that romantic kind who believes in full moons anymore! But come to think of it, why not? I'm only in my early 60s and who says love cannot happen to someone more mature!? As long as I still feel young at Heart (and there's Jackie, now his son Jaycee, and my other young artistes as Daniel Wu, Terrence and my new Group of ALIVE NOT DEAD (take a look at the website www.alivenotdead.com which is really quite unusual and interesting, more daring than many sites you may have seen), staying young at heart is not that difficult, at least most of the time. Just look at the past weekend, Jackie rushed back from Toronto just in time to share the Festival dinner with his Family. Solon naturally spent it with his wife and two adorable daughters! As for me, well, I was at my Repulse Bay retreat, munching a moon cake on my balcony and to share it with me were the thousands of China tourists who were visiting HK for the first time in their lives. The only difference was that I was alone on my balcony while they were on the beach! We were all munching moon cakes at the same time and looking at the same moon! It gave me a curious but warm feeling! At that moment, we were all looking at the same moon, not the Chinese moon, the HK moon, not the American moon and it was all the same, neither was brighter, rounder or shimmering better!

Back to reality, it's really been an unbelievable month of traveling for all of us at the Jackie Chan Group. I think Katharine Mysak kept you guys pretty up to date with Jackie's travels since the Mega-charity weekend in Shanghai. Solon and I rushed back to HK for one day, then immediately took the cast and crew of one of our production company's melodramas EVERLASTING REGRET (selected for competition in Venice) to the Venice Film Festival while Jackie had to make a stop in Japan to shoot an Interactive TV game which we will be launching in Japan soon to be followed by the US launch probably around X'mas. We had to part ways with the understanding to meet back up in the Toronto Film Festival a few days hence!

Festival times are chaotic airport times and missing luggage times. One usually has to fly from the East to a European Airport such as London, France, Frankfurt where there are so many connecting flights and usually not ample time to do it! So all of us arrived in Venice dead tired. Most of the luggage was there but one was missing! Daniel Wu's bag, where he put his tuxedo and formal wear for the next evening's red carpet premiere was all in it! From our Hotel which was on the Lido side, we took a water taxi to St. Marco's and started our shopping spree, or 'hunt' right away! Finally after 3 hours of walking and searching, Daniel finally got the entire wardrobe he wanted. As for me, Solon and I had given up an hour earlier. It was summer and the cafe bands were all taking turns playing the beautiful music in the Piazzas. The refreshing champagne cocktail and the open faced sandwich of Parma ham on just plain bread were just what I needed for my tired legs! As I sat there, I couldn't help but reminisce. I'd been to St. Marco's many times before, I had shopped like every fascinated tourist did but I never remembered getting tired. We would only complain why the water taxi came to pick us up too early! Finally, the truth crept on me! The St. Marco's Square could not have grown bigger. The cruel fact is physical age has crept up and I could no longer walk as much as I could those long times ago!

This really took effect when I arrived back in HK. By the way perhaps I forgot to mention, but I just had an angioplasty done on my main artery just 2 days before I went on the Shanghai mission. Now this is another joke: Americans, as I understand, go for body checkups once a year at least, if not twice! This is regular and acceptable for them. For the HK Chinese, one just doesn't go for a MRI or C.T. Scan unless the Doctors demand it! (We hesitate partly because of costs and also partly because why trouble troubles until troubles trouble you!) Going into a Hospital is just not a good thing!) Anyway, our dear colleague Solon had a very minor hand tremble a few months back and our Doctors thought he should go for a brain check. According to my clinical reports, I'm OK but might as well do it together for company sake or whatever! To cut a long story short, Solon came up perfectly OK! I did not have such good luck! Nothing too serious but there was a 50% blockage in the main artery of my heart so it was better to get it done as soon as possible especially since I wanted to go along to Shanghai. So one day you're perfect, the next day you're in the Operation room by 9:30 am the next, they operate on you for 2 hours or so, then you're out to rest in your own hospital room and under observation for one day and then just overnight, you're certified fit once again and are at liberty to get out of Hospital as you wish! In fact, the operation had been so successful, the Doctor told me if I promise to quit smoking, he would even bring a bottle of bubbly to celebrate that night! Perhaps this is the advancement of medical science, one day you're sick, the next day you're OK! Everything seems so easy and artificial!

One "bubbly" would have been all right but during the Shanghai Charity Events and the Venice Film Festival that followed, every night was an occasion for a bottle of bubbly and something more! When I returned from Venice, my Doctors were shocked to see my blood pressure had gone sky high and my heartbeat was at least a hundred and over! The orders came - if Toronto would mean the same kind of drinking (which I'm sure it would!), the Doctors ordered me not to go instead! Good old Solon was willing to take my place in just a day's notice. The Toronto trip would have been tough! Very long flying hours, millions of interviews followed by just one red carpet screening, and then back on the flight again to Los Angeles for an afternoon to shoot an Intellectual Property API with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger before Jackie hops on the plane to fly back to HK again!

That's not the end yet. He flew to Chengdu to promote THE MYTH and tomorrow night would be the China Premiere of THE MYTH at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. But we'll have to miss that too because tomorrow night in Hong Kong would be the Premiere of EVERLASTING REGRET, which Solon and I will host! No stopping yet, two more premieres to go! Charity Gala Premiere for THE MYTH in aid of the Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation on September 21 at the prestigious IFC and then its General Premiere for the Public on September 22, 2005 at busy Times Square.

It is perhaps not too common for a single Production Company to have two premieres at the same time! Frankly speaking, we are proud that two of our productions, one each so different from the other, have performed so well that we have to 'fight' for the same release dates! But it's the National Day Holiday Season in China and it's just too tempting to let go! How the movies will do, we won't know until next week, but our consolation is whichever you pick, you will be seeing a Jackie Chan movie and the money goes to the same pocket! Hopefully you'll see both and then we can hope to have three in competition at the same time next year!

Bye for now! Enjoy your Moon Festival too and may Love come to each and every one of you in whichever way you wish! Remember, wherever we are, let's hope the moon is just as bright!

Warmest Aloha,
Willie

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