The Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, sometimes called the lantern festival due to all the lighting of, well, lanterns, is on October 6 this year, rather late in the Lunar calendar, but good for me because it’s a Chinese holiday I always seem to miss. Yesterday afternoon, on a routine trip to pick up frozen dumplings from my favorite chaotic grocery on Canal Street, I walked straight into what seemed to be some early festivities on Mott Street.

The Mid-Autumn Moon Festival occurs on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, when supposedly the moon is its fullest and brightest. In the olden days, the holiday was to celebrate the summer harvest, while my students in China claimed it was a homesickness holiday. You were supposed to go home if you could, and if you couldn’t, spend the night with other people also away from family. Nowadays it seems to be about causing a ruckus on Mott Street, and as always, trying to eat mooncakes.

Before you get excited about the sound of this, keep in mind that Asians generally don’t know how to do sweets. For instance right now I’m eating what is supposedly a Japanese blueberry pastry, but might as well be a stale slice of Wonder bread. Mooncakes are extremely heavy and sometimes packed with hardboiled egg yolks, which symbolize the roundness of the full moon. Because nothing says cake like a mouthful of a salty, sulphuric duck egg yolk.

To tell you the truth, I’m not quite sure what was happening on Mott Street. I seem to have just missed some sort of performance, as well as some lion dancing. At one point, a woman got on stage and started singing horribly acapella. Part of the program, or interloper jazzed up on boba tea? Hard to tell.

The crowds were extra thick, but as always pushing past people is the way to go in C-town. Of course the tourists and squeamish don’t like it, but hey, when in Rome. The best is moving kids out of the way (gently of course). Their parents rarely get bent out of shape because of the whole respecting elders thing. Confucian doctrine rules.

Ongoing and upcoming is something called Lunar Stages, during which you can catch performances and movies for free in Columbus Park. Unfortunately I’ve already missed Peking Opera, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a drum performance, and Once Upon a Time in China, a classic I’ve never seen.

Next week is a shadow puppet show and King of Masks (seen it), and on the last night are a performance from Gaijin a Go-Go, “Asian inspired pop,” the website says, performed by what I’m guessing are non-Asian performers, followed, inexplicably, by Charlie’s Angels. Because when I think Chinese culture, I think white girl group and Lucy Liu playing second fiddle to some other white girls.

My advice? Go to the Asia Society and see the exhibit, One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now instead. And stay away from the mooncakes.