Xingbai He

The Chinese Moon Festival

The Chinese Moon Festival, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, takes place on the fifteenth of the eighth lunar month, in late September or early October. On the lunar calendar, the first day of every month is the new moon, and the fifteenth day of every month is the day of the full moon or harvest moon. During the Tang dynasty (A.D.618-906), the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month was made an official holiday—the Moon Festival. The event celebrates the harvest moon, when the crops have been gathered and heavy work in the field is over.

The Moon Festival is full of legendary stories. Legend says that during King Yao’s rule, ten suns appeared in the sky. Because the heat from these suns endangered crops, the existence of people and wildlife, King Yao asked a famous archer Hou Yi to shoot down nine of the ten suns. As a reward, Hou Yi married King Yao’s beautiful daughter Chang E. The king was worried that the extra suns would appear again and cause new disaster, so he gave Hou Yi a pill that was said to ensure immortality. One day, Chang E accidentally swallowed the pill because of her curiosity and immediately started floating into the air. She soon flew to the moon where she stays until today, leaving poor Hou Yi to see only the shadow of his wife when the moon is full.

The Moon Festival is a big holiday with family reunions. On the night of the festival, families gather to relax, give thanks, celebrate family unity, and view the moon. A banquet is typically held at midnight. There is also lion dance shows on the street. The lion dance was originally used for worship and praying for rain, but now it has become a folk entertainment.

Moon cakes are another popular feature of the festival. They have played a central role in the Moon Festival traditions. Once, according to Chinese legend, moon cakes helped bring about a revolution. Towards the end of the Yuan Dynasty (during the Mongolian rule of China, first established by Genghis Khan), the Chinese majority were tired of Mongolian rule. A Chinese rebel leader named Liu Fu Tong devised a scheme to coordinate the rebellions without being discovered. He knew that the Moon Festival was drawing near and ordered his followers to make a special kind of cake called moon cakes. Packed into each moon cake was a message with the outline of the attack. On the night of the Moon Festival, the rebels successfully overthrew the Mongols, thus ending the Yuan dynasty. Today, far from the exotic and heroic legends, Chinese communities all over the world make and consume moon cakes during the traditional Moon Festival.

The Moon Festival is also a romantic one. Lovers get together, watch the full moon, drink to the moon, and eat delicate moon cakes. Even for lovers in different places, the moon links them together. They watch the same moon at the same time, and they seem to have each other at that hour. A great number of poems have been devoted to this romantic festival. I hope the Moon Festival will bring you romance and happiness.