happy 八月十六！
had a great time chatting away yesterday night with different bunches of people. =) wonder how was their latern festival celeb yestd. if only my group members had told be earlier that my meeting today is postponed then i could possibly join them.. but then again, it was some tradeoff. XD hope they've taken some pics for me to see. =P
Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节) also known as the Moon Festival, is a popular East Asian celebration of abundance and togetherness, dating back over 3,000 years to China's Zhou Dynasty. In Singapore and Malaysia, it is also sometimes referred to as the Lantern Festival or "Mooncake Festival", which is just the same as "Mid-Autumn Festival" but with different names. It is not to be confused with the Latern Festival (元宵节) celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunar year in the Chinese calendar, which marks the end of the series of celebrations starting from the Chinese New Year in other continents.
The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September in the Gregorian calendar), a date that parallels the Autumn Equinox of the solar calendar. This is the ideal time, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest, to celebrate the abundance of the summer's harvest. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different varieties.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar (the other being the Chinese Lunar New Year), and is a legal holiday in several countries. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Traditionally, on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomeloes together. Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as:
- Eating moon cakes outside under the moon
- Putting pomelo rinds on one's head
- Carrying brightly lit lanterns
- Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e
- Planting Mid-Autumn trees
- Lighting lanterns on towers
- Fire Dragon DancesThe custom of celebrating the moon (Chinese 月亮 yue4 liang4 in Chinese) for both the Han Chinese and minority nationalities, can be traced as far back as the ancient Xia Dynasty and Shang Dynasty of China (20th century BC-1060s BC). In the Zhou Dynasty (1066 BCE-221 BCE), the people celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival to worship the moon.
The practice became very prevalent in the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) that people enjoyed and worshipped the full moon. In the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), however, people started making round moon cakes (Chinese:月饼 yue4bing3), as gifts to their relatives in expression of their best wishes of family reunion. At night, they came out to watch the full moon to celebrate the festival. Since the Ming (1368-1644), and Qing Dynasties (1644-1911), the custom of Mid-Autumn Festival celebration has become unprecedentedly popular.
No comments:
Post a Comment