Customer Reviews

Mooncakes and Hungry Ghosts: Festivals of China

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This book offers a good, introductory survey of Chinese festivals--presented in the terse, economical style of a study guide. (And it's not much bigger.) I bought it (used) for pennies, and am delighted with it; at full price, I'd be less satisfied.

Some of this information is freely available through a web search of "chinese festivals and celebrations." What this book adds, wonderfully, are frequent notes on:
> Historical roots of a festival
> Variations in its observance, over time and location
> Other associated elements and their significance (e.g., colors, numbers, foods, flowers, etc.)

Where it falls down is in remembering that it's a reference: There are the requisite tables and lists that you'd expect in a guide--but the quality of organization, overall, is poor. In particular, the festivals, themselves, are grouped thematically (e.g., festivals of the living, festivals of the dead . . . "festivals of romance, and compassion, survival and marriage" <whew!>). I didn't find these useful distinctions--nor did the authors either, apparently, because there's never a discussion of what distinguishes one theme-group from another, and why a festival is included there. Book in hand, I still lack a ready answer on the sequence of the festivals and where they fall on the calendar.

Minor points: About a dozen nice color plates in the center of the book--but most illustrations are small, black-and-white, and of poor quality. They seem less intended to inform, than to improve page design and break up the text. There's frequent use of pinyin--with no tone marks.

This is a nice book, useful as a reference for all the major Chinese holidays.