Reunion time for families
IT’S that time of the year again where the Chinese look forward to the Moon Festival. Also, known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, it traditionally falls on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, which is in September or early October on the Gregorian calendar.
For the Chinese community, it’s a reunion time for families, just like Thanksgiving and is the second most important festival in China after Chinese New Year.
Chinese people celebrate it by gathering for dinner, worshipping the moon, lighting paper lanterns and eating mooncakes to name a few.
Here are some important factors about the festival according to the website www.chinahighlights.com
How the Chinese celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival As the second most important festival in China, Mooncake Festival is celebrated in many traditional ways. Here are some of the most popular traditional celebrations.
Enjoying family reunions
The roundness of the moon represents the reunion of the family in Chinese minds.
Families will have dinner together on the evening of the Mooncake Festival.
Eating Mooncakes
Mooncakes are the most representative food for the Mooncake Festival, because of their round shape and sweet flavour.
Family members usually gather around and cut a mooncake into pieces and share its sweetness.
Nowadays, mooncakes are made in various shapes (round, square, heart-shaped, animalshaped …) and in various flavours, which makes them more attractive and enjoyable.
Appreciating the moon
The full moon is the symbol of family reunions in Chinese culture. It is said, sentimentally, that “the moon on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival was the brightest and the most beautiful”.
Chinese people usually set a table outside their houses and sit together to admire the full moon while enjoying tasty mooncakes.
Worshipping the moon
According to the legend of the Mid-Autumn Festival, a fairy maiden named Chang’e lives on the moon with a cute rabbit.
So usually on the night of the Moon Festival, people set a table under the moon with mooncakes, snacks, fruits, and a pair of candles lit on it. Some believe that by worshipping the moon, Chang’e (the moon goddess) may fulfil their wishes.
Making colourful lanterns
Mid-Autumn lanterns have many shapes and can resemble animals, plants, or flowers. The lanterns are hung in trees or on houses, creating beautiful scenes at night.
Some Chinese people write good wishes on the lanterns for health, harvests, marriage, love and education, to name a few.
In some countryside areas, local people light lanterns that fly up into the sky or make lanterns that float on rivers and release them like prayers of dreams coming true.
This year’s theme is Blessings.