Greeting the moon
In Thailand the mooncake night is kept above all in Thai-Chinese households and neighbourhoods, where tables are set out under the full moon with fruit and cakes and the family greets it together. The book this set comes from is named for exactly that — the Mooncake Festival, greeting the moon — and the pictures follow it: a grandmother’s pomelo, a temple bell, a balcony with a view of nothing but sky, spilled fruit and what happens next.
Thailand’s own great festival of light, Loy Krathong, is a separate occasion on a separate full moon later in the year, when small decorated floats are set on the water. One page in this set is a krathong being made properly and cleanly, because it is the picture Thai children draw — but it belongs to that festival, not to this one, and it is worth telling a child so.
