Wish everyone Happy Mid-Autumn and enjoy your mooncake.
The Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, or in Chinese, Zhongqiu Jie, it is also sometimes referred to as the Lantern Festival or Mooncake Festival.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the few most important holidays in the Chinese calendar, the others being Chinese New Year and Winter Solstice, and is a legal holiday in several countries. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Traditionally, on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomelos together. Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as:
- Eating moon cakes outside under the moon
- Putting pomelo rinds on one's head
- Carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, floating sky lanterns
- Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e (simplified Chinese: 嫦娥; traditional Chinese: 嫦娥; pinyin: cháng'é)
- Planting Mid-Autumn trees
- Collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members
- Fire Dragon Dances
source: Wikipedia
Chinese legend has it that messages were hidden in mooncakes for the uprising against the rule of the Mongols. Other tales include the mythical Chang Er, 10 suns and the jade hare prancing around on the moon. Are you moonstruck yet?
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