
#Midautumn festival greetings full
The cakes, typically round, symbolizing the full moon, are presented as gifts to relatives and friends. The Mid-Autumn Festival is also known as the Mooncake Festival. Parks, squares, or hills are recommended. In modern times, after a family reunion dinner, some people choose to go outdoors to admire the full moon on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival.Ī good place to admire the moon should be wide and open, high, or somewhere with water. Gazing at the moon is an ancient tradition dating back to the Zhou dynasty (around 500 BC) when people held ceremonies to welcome the full moon. The full moon is a symbol of family reunion, reminding people of their hometowns and loved ones. Read Mid-Autumn Festival Food for more details. Pumpkins, chestnuts, taro, persimmons, sweet potato, and walnuts usually feature in the festival feast, emphasizing the bounty of the fall harvest, along with traditional celebratory foods like crab, pork, and duck. People will share a fantastic meal together to enjoy this family reunion time. During the festival, family members will try their best to go back home and get together with their parents, no matter how far from home. This tradition is much like Thanksgiving in the United States. Mid-Autumn Festival is a time for families reunion. With the colorful folklore, stories, music, poems and legends. Recipes of the season, festive e-mail greetings, along More about the Mid-Autumn Festival around the Webįestival celebrations in the U.S. There's still no real evidence if moon cakes had anything to do with it, but it's a great story! The Mongols' ouster eventually led to the establishment of the Ming dynasty. Here the one about moon cakes being responsible for the overthrow of invading Mongols? As the story goes, secret messages were distributed inside thousands of moon cakes during the Mid-Autumn festival in 1368 to alert revolutionaries when to act.Sweet bean filling and fruit flavored moon cakes are the most popular and cheap to buy in China, but prices can rise into the thousands of yuan (about US$400) for a fancy gift box of 'gourmet' moon cakes.In Beijing, evening boat rides to gaze at the moon are wildly popular during the festival and must be booked up to months in advance.

In some parts of China, parents still plot to arrange for blind dates for their umarried adult offspring during the festival. The full moon and cooler weather call for snuggling and moon gazing.The modern moon festival weekend is a time for family reunions, and one of the busiest travel times of the year second only to Chinese New Year when motorists clog the roads in epic traffic jams.Trung Thu and in Japan at the Tsukimi festival. Occur during the same time - in Korea during the three-day Harvest festivals with their own unique traditions also Of course, this being the harvest festival, there is also an abundance of fresh harvest vegetables available at markets such as pumpkins, squash, and grapes. The Mid-Autumn festival includes parades, lion dancing, and lots of feasting! ( photo courtesy SFCMA). In San Francisco as well as in Los Angeles, New York City, and cities with Chinatowns coast to coast, Lobster and salmon are particular favorites along withĪpples, pomegranates, and roasted chestnuts.

Other traditionalįoods for a Chinese Mid-Autumn feast are red for good Moon cakes (photo, left) remain one of the oldest traditional ways to celebrate the festival. Lantern Festival), but whatever name it goes by, the centuries-oldįestival remains a beloved annual ritual celebrating an abundance The Lantern Festival, (not to be confused with a similar celebration Kong, Malaysia and Singapore, it's sometimes referred to as The festival dates back to the Tang dynasty in 618 A.D., and as with many celebrations in China there are ancient It is also a romantic night for lovers, who sit holding hands on hilltops, riverbanks and park benches, captivated by the brightest moon of the year. Stay up past midnight, parading multi-colored lanterns into the wee hours as families take to the streets to moon-gaze. Throughout the Mid-Autumn Festival, children are delighted to Little surprise, then, that the Mid-Autumn Festival ( Zhong Qiu Jie) is a day of family reunions much like a Western Thanksgiving. In 2023, the Mid-Autumn festival falls on Friday, September 29.Īlso known as the Moon Festival, the night of the full moon signals a time of completeness and abundance.

It's a tradition that's thousands of years old and, like the moon that lights up the celebration, it's still going strong!Ĭhina and throughout many Asian countries people celebrate MAIN Holidays Mid-Autumn Moon Festival 2023
