Over the Moon

How Bánhmì11 celebrated our first Mid-autumn in London

Saturday was possibly the windiest day thus far this year. It also happened to be the eighth full moon of the lunar calendar and to celebrate Trung Thu, the Mid-autumn festival, Bánhmì11 put together our first event. Blocking the wind from the stall with two trolleys, shielding the oven and gas stove with a large collapsed carton box, we wondered if the wind would really let us keep the food warm. Rob had put double-weight under the umbrellas and double-clipped them next to each other, like connecting compartments in a beehive. When a big wind blew over, the entire construction shook, we retreated into the back of our collars and everyone froze for a moment, but despite the occasional pause; the strings held, the umbrellas withstood the wind and the stall continued its rhythmic activities until the end of the day. In the gusty wind, barely warm enough with our scarves, we put up decorations and the lanterns hung from pole to pole, like fragments of our childhood memories lingering under the London sky.

When we were children, Trung Thu was a time to make up with the kid who stole your pencil, to be out in the neighborhood and play tag all day, to forget about doing chores, to ask for our cousins to sleep over, and to stay up really late watching the moon. For weeks, we would have been picking out our lanterns, trading them with the other children, pleading with aunties and uncles to buy us yet another star-shaped one, with just the right color combination, lots of glitter, and lots of trimmings. When night falls, we lit our lanterns and went around our small alleys singing Mid-autumn songs, proud and loud like a well-rehearsed marching band, raising our lanterns toward the sky, or moving them on the ground so they spinned, wearing animal face masks and beating enthusiastically on drums. Under the moonlight, it was a spellbinding show and we participated with such intentional preparation, such ritualistic seriousness and such energetic excitement that made Mid-autumn night truly magical.
Growing up and going away from home, all these activities have faded away but the one thing that remains is that whenever possible, we always eat mooncake and this simple act alone, is enough to remember the spirit of Trung Thu. Before Saturday, we couldn’t eat any of the mooncakes, saving them for big day but we went back and forth over debating which type is really the best- shiny crispy golden banh nuong, or gooey white glutinous rice banh deo, and compounding our conundrum trying to figure out which combination of fillings is the tastiest, mung bean and lotus seed, or coconut and sesame, or egg yolk and sausage. On the day, we cut the mooncakes into small pieces, the way old people usually take them with tea, and shared them around. Perhaps the pastries looked a bit strange, if you haven’t seen them before, but for us last Saturday was as an authentic taste of Trung Thu as you could have ever tried.

No one knows when Mid-autumn became a children’s festival in the Far East, just like how Halloween is the most exciting event for children in the West. Somehow, when we tried to remember what growing up was like, those Mid-autumn nights always came to mind as the most vivid, magical moments and we kept walking down memory lane searching for more. In the colorful fabric of our childhoods, the songs, the lanterns, the stories of Trung Thu were the uncanny threads that stringed the years together. Because of this, we wanted to organize Trung Thu as an early Halloween, to share some of our joys growing up with the lovely children who visit our stall. We noticed that there are a lot of children who visit our stall, but often times they are left out of what we have to offer. They are not allowed to drink coffee and they eat bánh mì with only butter or pate. This was an occasion for us to spoil them with sweet moon cakes, colorful lanterns and fun animal face masks to share and play with others. As for treating the grown-ups, there was plenty of xoi xeo sticky rice, summer rolls goi cuon and chicken salad with Vietnamese herbs that our fabulous girlfriends helped making the night before. The only trouble was that we run out of food too early, so hopefully you got there in time for some mooncake!

London weather has a way of making mid-autumn seem almost like mid-winter, and we could see the soup taking longer to heat up and the bread growing cold and hard more quickly. But being amidst the hanging lanterns, seeing the children at the stall running around with their masks, we were reminded of how as children, we took everything around us more seriously than ourselves, believing in the things our eyes never saw, and through our imagination, every mindless thing came to life. Looking at the moon on Mid-autumn night, we really saw a boy sitting under a big banyan tree, looking down on us, just like the legend has it. We wish that somehow, for ourselves and those who work with us, looking forward and upward, we can see a vision of Bánhmì11 with the same childlike conviction and clarity, and together, we can turn it into a reality.

Photo Credits: Hoa Nguyen

Posted on: 09.10.2009