Mid-Typhoon Festival?

Today is the 15th day of the 8th month according to the lunar calendar, and thus is the occasion of the Mid-Autumn Festival 月見. One of the biggest holidays in the Chinese world, the Moon Festival (as it's also known) is a day when millions of Taiwanese will get together with their families to have barbecues, eat mooncakes 月餅, set off fireworks and look at the full moon (when they can see it through the haze of smoke wafting up from all those BBQ grills)...or would, except that this year, slow-moving Typhoon Sinlaku has chosen this weekend to strike Taiwan, thus washing out, both figuratively and literally, the holiday plans of most people on this island.

As for this 外人, I'm not too disappointed by the turn of events. For one thing, on Friday evening I had a sore throat and a touch of a fever, so this weekend wasn't going to be an active one anyway. For another, Taiwanese holidays mean virtually nothing to me, except as a day off without pay (and Mid-Autumn Festival falls on a Sunday this year anyway, though my one afternoon class on Saturdays was canceled as a result of Sinlaku), so it wasn't as if today was something I had been looking forward to (my wife is pretty blase when it comes to most traditional observations); and, finally, the environment usually takes a beating on the day of the Moon Festival from all the barbecuing and fireworks, so the while the island is taking a pounding from the typhoon, the air quality isn't.

Because of Sinlaku, the most interesting thing we've done this weekend was to go out this afternoon to buy lunch from Fengyuan's 豊原 just-opened, first-ever MOS Burger モスバーガー shop. MOS Burger is a Japanese company that is the second-largest fast food franchise chain in Japan after McDonald's, a fact alone that should dissuade some bloggers from somehow thinking there are more more MOS outlets in Taipei 台北 alone than in all of Japan :). The general consensus, among both Japanese and Taiwanese, is that the burgers are better at MOS Burger, but that McDonald's serves up superior french fries - an assessment I tend to agree with. There are four McDonald's restaurants in Fengyuan, but up until this past Friday, the only MOS Burger joints were to be found in nearby Taichung 台中. However, it seems MOS Burger pushed the opening of its Fengyuan branch ahead by a week or so, because the offerings for the time being are limited to just four kinds of set meals (no fries) - the full menu won't be available until September 19. Nevertheless, in a small city like Fengyuan, this qualifies as a major event!

Later in the afternoon, we paid a brief visit to my in-laws, where Amber demonstrated the peculiar Mid-Autumn Festival custom of wearing pomelo rinds on the head!

UPDATE: According to the news reports on TV, a section of the bridge between Fengyuan and Houli后里 has collapsed this evening, sending two cars into the Dajia River 大甲川 below. The river is normally a calm trickle, but as a result of the typhoon, is now a raging torrent. Pamela and I have driven across this bridge countless numbers of times, and it's only a few minutes' drive from our apartment building. Some bloggers have been posting things to the effect that typhoons are not such a big deal, and making light of the weather. I'm sure the families of those who were in the cars at the time the span of bridge fell into the water would strongly disagree with such flippant characterizations of natural disasters.