![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Post 509) from Xanga
Sep. 28th, 2004 09:53 pm509) Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!
Today (September 28) is a major holiday in China -- the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on the 15th of the eighth lunar month. (According to the lunar calendar, the full moon always falls on the 15th.) All across the nation, millions of people have been streaming home to their hometowns so they can spend the holiday with family. It's probably as big there as Christmas is here -- or maybe even more so, since so many people live in large cities away from their birthplaces, and this is the time of year to return home to one's roots.
Traditionally, the way to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival is to sit outside under the light of the moon, and eat round "moon cakes." There are different kinds of moon cakes, but all of them are round like the full moon. People drink tea or wine and toast the moon, and in literature characters were always composing extemporaneous poems and reciting them for each other. (I don't know whether many people do that in real life.)
There's a legend that the Mid-Autumn Festival began when the native Han people of China wanted to revolt against the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279-1368). To coordinate the revolt, the revolutionaries supposedly spread a rumor that a plague was coming and the only way to prevent it was to eat a certain kind of mooncake. Upon cutting the cakes open, the message "Revolt on the fifteenth of the eighth month" was revealed, so everyone knew when the decisive moment would be...
Today (September 28) is a major holiday in China -- the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on the 15th of the eighth lunar month. (According to the lunar calendar, the full moon always falls on the 15th.) All across the nation, millions of people have been streaming home to their hometowns so they can spend the holiday with family. It's probably as big there as Christmas is here -- or maybe even more so, since so many people live in large cities away from their birthplaces, and this is the time of year to return home to one's roots.
Traditionally, the way to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival is to sit outside under the light of the moon, and eat round "moon cakes." There are different kinds of moon cakes, but all of them are round like the full moon. People drink tea or wine and toast the moon, and in literature characters were always composing extemporaneous poems and reciting them for each other. (I don't know whether many people do that in real life.)
There's a legend that the Mid-Autumn Festival began when the native Han people of China wanted to revolt against the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279-1368). To coordinate the revolt, the revolutionaries supposedly spread a rumor that a plague was coming and the only way to prevent it was to eat a certain kind of mooncake. Upon cutting the cakes open, the message "Revolt on the fifteenth of the eighth month" was revealed, so everyone knew when the decisive moment would be...
