What makes you think of when look up and see the full moon in the sky? For Chinese people, on the 15th of August in lunar calendar (falling on 24th September this year), the moon is at its roundest and brightest, symbolizing togetherness and reunion. Chinese celebrate under the full moon and make it a festival called “Mid-Autumn Festival” or “Mooncake Festival” 中秋节 (zhōng qiū jié). People in mainland China enjoy one day off on the festival which is usually connected with the weekend. For overseas Chinese, it is also an important festival to celebrate.
The story behind中秋节 (zhōng qiū jié)
There are different stories and legends behind Mid-Autumn Festival, here we introduce you the most popular and romantic one:
Celebrate 中秋节 (zhōng qiū jié)
To today’s Chinese, Mid-Autumn festival is going far beyond just worshiping. It has become an important chance for family members gather together to have a reunion meal, appreciate the bright full moon, eat moon cakes, and express strong yearnings toward family members and friends who live afar. People who don’t have time to stay with their parents will try their best to go home to at least have dinner together.
- Eating Mooncakes
Mooncake is made from wheat flour and sweet stuffing, such as sugar and lotus seed powder, coming in various flavours according to the region. The moon cakes are round, symbolizing the reunion of a family, so it is easy to understand how the eating of moon cakes under the round moon can evoke longing for distant relatives and friends.
Image from： Zhang Peng—LightRocket/Getty
This video introduces 5 other traditional food that Chinese eat during Mid-Autumn Festival
- Appreciating the moon
For who can have reunion meal with their family, sitting together, talking about recent life anecdotes and admiring the moon can be a great enjoyment and comfort; while for those being far away from their family, appreciating the moon causes serious homesick. Many famous ancient poets wrote about the full moon and expressed their homesickness.
Image from： GZYEAH.com
- Sending Mid-Autumn messages
In ancient China, when people miss their family or friends afar, they wrote letters that took a long time to convey their longings. It is great for modern Chinese who live with instant message app that can send your wishes, or make audio and video call to get connected with friends and relatives. To send festival wishes with message app is also a good way to break the iAce if you don’t know how to start a conversation by phone. Nowadays, young people like to send messages via instant messaging apps, such as WeChat.
Image from: China Highlight
At last we share you the most famous song for Mid-Autumn, with which we pay a tribute to the moon and make the best wishes to you all. The lyrics of this song was a poem wrote by 宋代sòng dài Song Dynasty (960-1279) poet 苏轼sū shì, sung by the most welcomed Hongkong female singer in last century邓丽君dèng lì jūn Teresa Teng.
Hope you enjoy the song and wish you:
中秋节快乐！zhōng qiū jié kuài lè！
Happy Mid-Autumn Festival！
Basic Vocabularies:
中秋节 zhōng qiū jié Mid-Autumn Festival
月亮 yuè liang The moon
满月 mǎn yuè Full moon
赏月 shǎng yuè Admire the moon
月饼 yuè bǐng Mooncake
团圆饭 tuán yuán fàn Reunion meal
