Origins and celebration of the Mid-Autumn festival

The Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节), also known as Lantern Festival, Moon Festival, or Mooncake Festival, is a holiday that is all about the appreciation of the moon. It’s not just celebrated in mainland China, but also on the Asian continent.

With more than 3,000 years of history, The Mid-Autumn festival is the second most important festival in Mainland China after the Chinese New Year and is celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar. The meaning: the celebration of the rice harvest and much other fruit, and worship of the moon.

?The origins

?The custom of worshiping the moon came from the Zhou Dynasty (1040- 256 BC). Ancient Chinese emperors offered sacrifices to the moon in autumn to pray for a good harvest in the coming year. Later, nobles and officials followed it, and it gradually spread to the ordinary people and became an official festival during the Tang Dynasty.

Historians have found the earliest written record of “Mid-Autumn” during the Han Dynasty. At that time the word Mid-Autumn was related to the season. They also found that the tradition to eat mooncakes during that specific period dates back from Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644) and became a Major Chinese Festival from Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368 to 1912).?Since 2008 the Moon Festival is a public holiday in Mainland china.

?The Legend

?Every festival has its own story, the moon festival is not the exception, there are many legends to explain the origin of the festival. One of the most popular stories about the Mid-Autumn festival is the one involving the Chinese Moon Goddess Chang’e and her husband Hou Yi, an archer.

?“Long time ago, there were ten suns in the sky, causing people’s death and burnt of the foods. One day Hou Yi use his bows and arrows to shoot down nine of them, saving the world.

?The Queen Mother of the West gave Hou Yi the “immortally elixir” in gratitude for for saving the planet from destruction, and it was enough for one person. He chooses to not drink it and gave it to his wife Chang’e to keep it safe for him.

One day, a thief broke into Yi’s house and tried to force Chang’e to give him the elixir, in that moment she knew she can’t defeat him and drank the elixir instead. She flew to the moon and became immortal.

Hou Yi was heartbroken that night when he realized that the moon was brighter and he saw his wife’s figure on the moon and offered her fruits and mooncakes. And since that day the tradition was born."

?The festival in modern times

??This time of the year is for family and friends to gather, watch the full moon, and eat mooncakes. Because of the central theme of family reunion, sometimes, the Chinese festival is compared with Thanksgiving in the U.S.

?The gifting and eating of the mooncakes is the most iconic figure of the festival. The roundness of the pastry evokes an image of the full moon which symbolizes wholeness and a sense of spiritual contentment since the members of the family are all together.

?In cities like Shanghai and Beijing, holds lantern exhibitions with traditional stage shows.

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?From China to the rest of Asia

?The Mid-Autumn Festival is also celebrated in other Asian countries beyond China. This is especially the case with Southeast Asian countries with large ethnically Chinese populations, such as Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, and Thailand.

?The celebration is based mostly on lighting lanterns and dragon dances.

?In Thailand, people give each other peach-shaped cakes. In Japan, the festival’s legend focuses on a mochi-making rabbit that lives on the moon. Baked mooncakes and sticky rice mooncakes are typical delicacies in Vietnam, which reflects a heavy Chinese influence. They have a round or rectangular shape that embodies sky and earth together – a symbol of affluence and wholeness.