MOONCAKES AND REBELLION: ASIA'S NIGHT OF MAGIC AND REVOLT

In this luminous heart of autumn, when the moon swells into a perfect pearl against the velvet sky, Asia pauses.

- will soon flourish WILSON LEE FLORES

Image: ChatGPT

On Oct. 6, 2025, this celestial spectacle will ignite the ancient Mid-Autumn Festival (sometimes called “Mooncake Festival”), a harvest celebration so profound it functions as the continent's universal Thanksgiving.

Beneath this luminous orb, families gather, poetic souls compose verses, and children parade with glowing laterns—all while quietly nibbling on Mooncake pastry that once orchestrated revolutions.

By the way, congratulations to Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte for recently hosting the city’s first-ever Mooncake Festival celebration in its Banawe district Chinatown. The festival, organized by the Quezon City Tourism Department, featured a 39-inch giant mooncake weighing 100 kilograms, a mooncake dice game, a vibrant lantern parade, and live performances by actors Richard Yap and McCoy De Leon.

There is a subtle, unspoken consensus that the festival’s brilliance is magnified by what it displaces. It arrives as the definitive curtain call on the seventh lunar month, the dreaded “Ghost Month,” when restless spirits are said to walk the earth.

As the full moon rises, it banishes not only the literal darkness but also the spectral unease, restoring order to the universe.

Hay, one can’t help but wish the same luminous power could cleanse our modern corridors of power here in the Philippines from their own vile hauntings — the ephemeral ghastly “Ghost Projects” that consume resources and vanish, and the shapeshifting