The Mid-Autumn Festival on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month celebrates the harvest moon and family reunion with mooncakes, lanterns and moon viewing.
Lunar date
15th day of the 8th month
Usual dates
Sep 8–Oct 6
Date and Origins
The Mid-Autumn Festival, Zhongqiu (中秋), falls on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. The seventh, eighth and ninth months make up autumn, so the fifteenth of the eighth sits right in its middle. Ancient rulers worshipped the sun in spring and the moon in autumn, and the term zhongqiu already appears in the Rites of Zhou. Tang poets made moon-viewing a literary pastime, the Song turned it into a popular festival, and by the Ming and Qing it ranked alongside the New Year.
The best-known legend is Chang'e flying to the moon: after the archer Hou Yi shot down nine of ten suns he received an elixir of immortality, which his wife Chang'e swallowed and floated up to live in the lunar palace. The moon also hosts Wu Gang, forever chopping a regenerating osmanthus tree, and the Jade Rabbit pounding medicine. A story that rebels against the Yuan dynasty hid messages in mooncakes is folklore without reliable historical support.
Customs
At its heart the festival is about family gathering to admire the full moon. Northern households once set out mooncakes and fruit to worship the moon, a rite traditionally led by women, and Beijing families displayed clay Lord Rabbit figures. Children in southern China carry lanterns shaped like starfruit, rabbits or goldfish. Pomelos are eaten everywhere, since the word sounds like 'blessing', and Taiwanese children wear the peel as a hat.
Festive Foods
Round mooncakes symbolise reunion and come in many styles. Cantonese mooncakes have thin crusts and rich fillings such as lotus seed paste with salted egg yolk or five kernels; Suzhou mooncakes have flaky layered pastry; Beijing styles are plainer; Yunnan's contain cured ham; and Teochew versions wrap mung bean or taro in flaky pastry. Hong Kong developed chilled snow-skin mooncakes in the late twentieth century, and Taiwan favours mung bean cakes and egg-yolk pastries. Pomelo, water caltrop, taro and osmanthus wine are other seasonal treats.
Regional Differences
In Taiwan, families barbecue outdoors, a habit that took off in the 1980s and is often credited to a barbecue sauce advertisement; Madou pomelos are the classic gift. Xiamen and Kinmen play bobing, rolling six dice in a bowl to win cakes of different ranks, a game folklore links to Koxinga's troops. Hong Kong stages lantern carnivals, and the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance, said to have begun as a prayer after a local plague more than a century ago, was listed as national intangible heritage in 2011. Hong Kong also speaks of welcoming, admiring and chasing the moon, and the day after the festival is a public holiday. Macau has lantern displays and its own fire dragon. In Singapore and Malaysia, Chinatowns glow with lanterns and the occasion is often called the Lantern Festival.
Korea's Chuseok is a three-day holiday rivalling Seollal, with ancestral rites, tidying family graves, half-moon songpyeon rice cakes and the ganggangsullae circle dance. Japan's Tsukimi is not a holiday; people set out moon-viewing dumplings and pampas grass. Vietnam's Tết Trung Thu centres on children, who carry star lanterns and watch lion dances while eating baked and sticky rice mooncakes.
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