Top ten traditional customs during the Mid-Autumn Festival

Where is the "festival flavor" of the Mid-Autumn Festival now? In addition to feeling the "atmosphere" of the festival in our hearts when we buy mooncakes, where can we find traces of the Mid-Autumn Festival? What do we do on the Mid-Autumn Festival? Shopping, spending time with parents, traveling or staying at home alone? Here, let's take you to find the folk activities of my country's Mid-Autumn Festival!

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1. Eating mooncakes "Luozhong Ji Wen" records that Tang Xizong ate mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival and felt that the taste was extremely beautiful, so he ordered the imperial kitchen to wrap the mooncakes in red silk and reward them to the new scholars. This may be the earliest record of mooncakes we can see. In the Song Dynasty, mooncakes had elegant names such as "lotus leaf","golden flower" and "hibiscus", and their making methods were more exquisite. Poet Su Dongpo praised him in a poem: "Small cakes are like chewing the moon, with crispy and sweet taste in them." Crisp is crispy, and Yi is sugar. You can imagine its sweet, crisp, fragrant and beautiful taste.

2. Appreciating the moon comes from offering sacrifices to the moon, and serious sacrifices turn into relaxing entertainment. The folk Mid-Autumn Festival moon-viewing activities began around the Wei and Jin Dynasties, but they did not become a custom. In the Tang Dynasty, watching and playing with the moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival was quite popular, and many poets had poems chanting the moon in their famous works. By the Song Dynasty, a Mid-Autumn Festival folk festival centered on moon-viewing activities was formed and was officially designated as the Mid-Autumn Festival. Different from the Tang Dynasty, Song people appreciated the moon more because of emotion. They often used the sun, the sun, the sky, the sky, and the sky, to describe the situation of human affairs. Even on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the clear light of the bright moon could not conceal the Song people's sadness. But for Song people, there is another form of the Mid-Autumn Festival, that is, the Mid-Autumn Festival is a secular and joyful festival: "Before the Mid-Autumn Festival, all shops sell new wine, noble families decorate pavilions, and people compete to occupy restaurants and play with the moon. Songs and songs are heard from afar, and they sit together until dawn." The Mid-Autumn Festival night in the Song Dynasty was a sleepless night. The night market was open all night, and tourists would enjoy the moon forever.

3. Sacrifice to the moon In ancient times, there was a custom of "sunset in autumn and sunset in the moon." The sunset moon means paying homage to the moon god. Set up a large incense table with mooncakes, watermelons, apples, red dates, plums, grapes and other sacrifices. Among them, mooncakes and watermelons are absolutely indispensable, and the watermelons must be cut into lotus shapes.

Under the moon, the statue of the moon is placed in the direction of the moon, the red candle is burning high, and the whole family pays homage to the moon in turn, and then the housewife cuts the reunion mooncakes. The person who cuts calculates in advance the number of members in the whole family. Those at home and those who are away from home must be counted together. They cannot cut more or less, and the size must be the same.

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4. Burning lanterns Mid-Autumn Festival night lanterns and internal combustion candles are tied with ropes to bamboo poles and hung high on the eaves or balcony, or small lights are used to build them into shapes or various shapes and hang them high in the house. This is commonly known as "Tree Mid-Autumn Festival" or "Vertical Mid-Autumn Festival." The lanterns hung by wealthy families can be dozens of feet high. Families gather under the lanterns to drink happily. Ordinary people will erect a flagpole and two lanterns to enjoy themselves. The lights in the city are like a glazed world. It seems that the scale of lighting lanterns in the Mid-Autumn Festival from ancient times to the present seems to be second only to the Lantern Festival.

5. Watching the tide "I know that the jade rabbit is very round and has become a frosty breeze in September. Send a message that the door is closed and the key is closed, and the tide at night stays in the middle of the moon." This is the poem "Watching the Tide on August 15th" written by Su Shi, a great poet in the Song Dynasty. In ancient times, in addition to observing the moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival, watching the tide was another Mid-Autumn Festival event in Zhejiang. The custom of watching the tide during the Mid-Autumn Festival has a long history, and it has been described in detail in Mei Cheng's "Seven Fas" Fu in the Han Dynasty. After the Han Dynasty, the trend of watching the tide during the Mid-Autumn Festival became more prevalent. Zhu Tinghuan's "Supplement to Old Things in Wulin" in the Ming Dynasty and Wu Zimu's "Dream Liang Lu" in the Song Dynasty also have records of watching the tide. The grand occasion of tide watching recorded in these two books shows that tide watching reached its peak during the Mid-Autumn Festival in the Song Dynasty.

6. Playing Rabbit Boy is a clay sculpture toy for children to play and entertain during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Its shape is human with rabbit mouths and ears. There are two long ears standing on the head and a three-pronged rabbit's mouth. Other places are no different from people. Nowadays, Tuzi is no longer seen on the market. It is only displayed as a folk cultural relic in places such as folk museums or sold in handicraft stores. Young people don't know much about it, but the old man talks about it with relish.

7. Walking the Moon On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, there is also a special moon-viewing activity called "Walking the Moon". Under the bright moonlight, people dressed in gorgeous clothes, partying in groups on three or five, parading through the streets, rafting on the Qinhuai River, or climbing buildings to watch the moonlight, laughing and laughing. In the Ming Dynasty, Nanjing built Wangyue Tower and Wanyue Bridge, and in the Qing Dynasty, there was Chaoyue Tower under the Lion Rock. They were both scenic spots for tourists to enjoy the moon while walking the moon; and the Baoyue Tower of Mochou Lake Park built after liberation became a new attraction for citizens to enjoy the moon. In the old days, Nanjing people also had a special prayer when they "walked on the moon": any married woman who had not given birth to a son would visit the Confucius Temple and then cross a bridge. It is said that they would have the "happy dream of a bear" and give birth to a boy).

8. Stealing onions and vegetables According to legend, if an unmarried girl steals vegetables or onions from another vegetable garden on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, it means that she will meet a man she wants in the future. There is a saying in Taiwan that "steal onions and marry a good husband; steal vegetables and marry a good son-in-law" refers to this custom.

9. Eating ducks, snails and taro The Mulao people in southwest my country pay attention to buying cakes and killing ducks on this day. Nanjing's osmanthus ducks, salty water ducks, and camphor tea ducks are often selling well at this time. If you don't find anything and take a Peking duck home to eat, it probably tastes good. People believe that Mid-Autumn Festival field snails can improve eyesight. After subsequent investigation, it was found that the vitamin A contained in snail meat is an important substance in eye pigments, which shows that this statement is reasonable. But why do we have to eat it during the Mid-Autumn Festival? Some people pointed out that around the Mid-Autumn Festival, when field snails are empty, there are no small snails in the abdomen, so the meat is particularly fat. Nowadays, many families in Guangzhou have the habit of frying field snails during the Mid-Autumn Festival.

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10. Drinking osmanthus wine Every Mid-Autumn Festival night, people look up at the bright moon, smell the fragrance of osmanthus, think of Wu Gang cutting osmanthus, drink a cup of osmanthus honey wine, and celebrate the sweetness of the family. It has become a festival enjoyment. Osmanthus flowers can not only be viewed, but also have edible value. In Qu Yuan's "Nine Songs", there are poems such as "Help the horse fight and drink cinnamon syrup" and "Lay cinnamon syrup and pepper syrup". It can be seen that the era of drinking osmanthus to make wine in my country has been quite long. But now, people mostly use red wine instead.