It's an eye opener. The ancients spent the Mid Autumn Festival like this
The 15th day of the eighth lunar month is a traditional Mid Autumn Festival for Chinese people. Because this is the middle of the autumn, it is called the Mid Autumn Festival. In the Chinese lunar calendar, a year is divided into four seasons, and each season is divided into three parts: Meng, Zhong and Ji. Therefore, the Mid Autumn Festival is also called Mid Autumn Festival. The moon on August 15 is rounder and brighter than the full moon in other months, so it is also called "Moonlight", "August Festival". On this night, people look up to the bright moon in the sky, which is like a plate of jade, and naturally look forward to family reunion. Travelers who are far away from home often take this opportunity to express their yearning for their hometown and relatives. Therefore, "Mid Autumn Festival" is also called "Reunion Festival".
In fact, the term "Mid Autumn Festival" was first found in the book "Zhou Li", while the truly national festival took shape in the Tang Dynasty. Every Mid Autumn Festival night, there will be a ceremony to welcome the cold and offer sacrifices to the moon. There will be a big incense table and offerings, including moon cakes and watermelons. The watermelon should be cut into lotus shape. Under the moon, the moon god is placed in the direction of the moon, and the candles are burning high. The whole family worships the moon in turn, and then the housewife cuts the reunion moon cake. He who cuts shall calculate in advance how many people there are in the whole family. Those who are at home and in other places shall be counted together. They shall neither cut more nor cut less. They shall be the same size. From this point of view, the ancient people paid more attention to the Mid Autumn Festival than the modern people.
So, how did the ancients spend the Mid Autumn Festival? So they have ten things to do.
One: eating moon cakes
According to the "Records of Luoyang", Xizong of the Tang Dynasty ate mooncakes on the Mid Autumn Festival, which were very delicious. He ordered the imperial dining room to wrap the mooncakes in red silk and give them to the new scholars. This is the earliest record of moon cakes that we can see. In the Song Dynasty, mooncakes were known as "lotus leaves", "golden flowers", "hibiscus" and so on, and their production methods were more sophisticated. Poet Su Dongpo once said in a poem: "The small cakes are like chewing the moon, with crispy and malty." Crispy is crispy, malty is sugar, and its taste is sweet, crisp and delicious. After the Song Dynasty, the production of moon cakes not only paid attention to taste, but also designed various patterns related to the legend of the moon palace on the cake surface. At first, the patterns on the cake surface were probably painted on paper and then pasted on the cake surface, and then simply pressed on the moon cake with a face mold. The full moon shaped moon cake also symbolizes reunion like the full moon on the 15th day of the lunar calendar. People regard it as festival food, use it to sacrifice the moon, and use it to present relatives and friends.
Part II: Light
On the night of the Mid Autumn Festival, the sky is as clear as water and the moon is as bright as a mirror. However, people are not satisfied with this, so they have the custom of "lighting a lamp" to help the moonlight. In Huguang area, there is a festival custom that tiles are stacked on towers to light lanterns. In Jiangnan area, there is a custom of making lightboats. In modern times, the custom of burning lanterns became more popular in the Mid Autumn Festival. Zhou Yunjin and Concubine He Xiangfei described in their article "An Attempt to Talk About the Seasons" that the Mid Autumn Festival was the most popular in Guangdong. A dozen days before the festival, every family tied lanterns with bamboo strips, made fruit, birds and animals, fish and insects, and words such as "Celebrate the Mid Autumn Festival", pasted colored paper and painted all kinds of colors. The internal combustion candle of the Mid Autumn Festival night light is tied to a bamboo pole with a rope, and the tree is high on the tile eaves or terrace, or the small light is built into a shape or various shapes, and hung on the high place of the house, commonly known as the "Mid Autumn Festival in Trees" or "Mid Autumn Festival in Upright". The lamp hanging from a rich and noble family can be as high as ten feet. Family members gather under the lamp to enjoy themselves. Ordinary people put up a flagpole and two lanterns to enjoy themselves. The city full of lights is like a world of colored glaze. It seems that the scale of burning lanterns in the Mid Autumn Festival in ancient times is second only to the Lantern Festival.
Part 3: Tide watching
"I must know that the jade rabbit is very round, and it has already become frosty and cold in September. Send a message that the door is closed and the key is closed, and the night tide stays to look at the middle of the month." This is the poem "Watching the tide on August 15" written by Su Shi, a great poet of the Song Dynasty. In ancient times, in Zhejiang, in addition to the Mid Autumn Festival, watching the tide is another Mid Autumn Festival event. The custom of watching the tide in the Mid Autumn Festival has a long history. As early as in the Han Dynasty, Mei Cheng's "Qi Fa" has a very detailed description. After the Han Dynasty, the Mid Autumn Festival became more popular. There are also records of tide watching in Zhu Tinghuan's Supplement to the Old Stories of Wulin in the Ming Dynasty and Mengliang Record by Song and Wu Dynasties. The grand occasion of watching the tide described in these two books shows that the Mid Autumn Festival tide watching reached an unprecedented peak in the Song Dynasty.
Part 4: Play with Rabbit
In the Record of Palace Maiden Tales written by Jin Yi and Shen Yiling, the story was told by a palace maid named Rong Er. At that time, it was the year when the Eight Power Allied Forces entered Beijing. The Empress Dowager Cixi escaped from Kyoto. On her way to escape, it happened to be the Mid Autumn Festival. In her panic, the Empress Dowager did not forget the old etiquette and ancient customs, so she held a ceremony of sacrificing the moon in the Xinzhou Gongyuan where she stayed. According to the story, after dinner, according to the custom in the palace, the queen will sacrifice to the "Taiyin King". It probably follows the habit of the Northeast that "men do not worship rabbits, women do not worship stoves", and "Taiyin King" is sacrificed by the housewives of each family. On the southeast corner of the courtyard, set up a table, ask for a magic code (a piece of paper is printed with a big rabbit pounding medicine in the moon palace), and insert it in the incense altar. The incense altar is a square bucket. The bucket in northern Shanxi is not round, but square. The bucket is filled with new sorghum, and yellow paper is pasted on the bucket mouth to serve four plates of fruit and four plates of moon cakes on the table. The moon cakes are stacked half a foot high. In addition, there is a large wooden plate in the middle with a one foot long round moon cake, which is specially made for rabbit sacrifice. There are also two new hairy beans. Four bowls of green tea are made by putting tea leaves in a bowl and rinsing them with cold water. In this way, the queen will take the concubine, Ge Ge, and so on. After the ceremony, it will be considered as a ceremony. This story tells the rule of worshiping the moon rabbit in the court of the Qing Dynasty. Although the incense altar had to be replaced by the square duel in the north of Shanxi Province during the flight, from a psychological point of view, because of the difficulties, it was more reverent and religious to the gods. From this story, the court of the Qing Dynasty called the Jade Rabbit in the middle of the month the Taiyin King. However, the folk are different. People call it Jade Rabbit Lord, which is not as solemn as Taiyin Lord, but more cordial. However, in the folk customs around Beijing, the Mid Autumn Festival is not solemn enough, but more games. Although it shows little respect for gods, it reflects the alienation of folk worship psychology. Since the Mid Autumn Festival changed from the ritual of sacrificing the moon to a folk festival, it has played down the color of ritual and custom, and the nature of tourism has become increasingly prominent. The custom of playing rabbit master can be said to be a powerful evidence of this phenomenon.
Part 5: Stay up late
According to folk legend, the later you sleep on the Mid Autumn Festival night, the longer you live. So some people pray for longevity, but more young people take this opportunity to play all night.
Sixth: Drinking osmanthus wine
In Qu Yuan's Nine Songs, there are verses such as "drinking cinnamon paste while helping the hero fight" and "drinking cinnamon paste while drinking cinnamon wine". But now, people mostly use red wine instead.
Seven: Stealing onions and vegetables
It is said that if an unmarried girl steals vegetables or onions from another vegetable garden on the Mid Autumn Festival night, she will meet a husband in the future. There is a saying in Taiwan that "if you steal onions, marry a good husband; if you steal vegetables, marry a good husband", which refers to this custom.
Eight: Eating Duck
Mulao people in Yunnan pay attention to buying cakes and killing ducks on this day. The osmanthus duck, salted water duck and camphor tea duck in Nanjing are also very popular at this time.
Ninth: Eating Snails
People believe that the mid-autumn snail can brighten the eyes. Later, it was found that vitamin a contained in snail meat was an important substance of eye pigment. It can be seen that this statement is reasonable. But why do we have to go on a diet during the Mid Autumn Festival? Some people pointed out that around the Mid Autumn Festival, when the snail was empty, there was no small snail in the belly, so the meat was particularly plump. Now in Guangzhou, many families have the habit of frying snails during the Mid Autumn Festival.
Ten: Eating Taro
According to Chaozhou Prefecture Annals written by Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty, "In the Mid Autumn Festival, when you play with the moon and eat taro, you are called to peel the ghost skin." Therefore, eating taro in the Mid Autumn Festival means to ward off evil spirits and eliminate disasters, and has the meaning of not believing in evil spirits.
