Sacrifice and worship the moon, celebrate the harvest

Share and give "reunion cakes"

Family reunion

Pray for marriage and children

Burn pagoda lanterns

Account settlement day

Traditional customs of the Mid-Autumn Festival

Sacrifice and worship the moon to celebrate the harvest

The Mid-Autumn Festival during the Tang and Song dynasties was a general social and entertainment festival. The main activities of the Mid-Autumn Festival were to appreciate and play with the moon. The nature of festivals changed during the Ming and Qing dynasties. People also admired the moon, but seemed to pay more attention to the divine significance of the moon god, as well as the ethical and economic relationships between people in real society. The Mid-Autumn Festival is a harvest season, and people use the Mid-Autumn Festival customs to express their celebration of the harvest. Offering seasonal fruits to the moon is not only a sacrifice to the moon, but also an enjoyment of the fruits of labor.

In the Ming Dynasty, people in Beijing celebrated the moon on August 15th. People bought a special "moonlight paper" in the market, which was a kind of deity with a statue of Moonlight Bodhisattva painted on it: Moonlight Bodhisattva holding the head Sitting on the lotus seat, next to him is a jade rabbit standing like a human holding a pestle and pounding medicine in a mortar. This kind of Moonlight Bodhisattva statue is as small as three inches and as large as more than ten feet long. The exquisite portrait is golden and brilliant. Every family in Beijing has a statue of Moonlight Bodhisattva and offers round fruits, cakes and watermelons. Watermelons should be cut into lotus shapes. At night, when the moon rises, people offer sacrifices and bow to the moon. After bowing, the moonlight paper is burned, and the removed offerings are generally shared among family members. The moon worship in Beijing changed during the Qing Dynasty. The moonlight god was presented as a gift from a Taoist temple and was titled "Yuefu Suyao Taiyin Star Lord". On this day, many "moonlight horses" are sold in the market. They are seven or eight feet long and two or three feet short. There are two flags on the top, which are red, green or yellow. They are offered to the moon, incense is burned and saluted. After the sacrifice, they are Paper ingots and paper money were burned together.

Sacrificing and worshiping the moon are common customs throughout the country during the Mid-Autumn Festival in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. A common proverb in the Qing Dynasty is: "The moon is full on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, and watermelon mooncakes are offered to the gods." There were special moon sacrifices in the Qing Dynasty. Moon cake, this moon cake is "rounder and larger" than ordinary moon cakes. Special mooncakes are usually shared by family members after the moon festival, and some are kept until New Year's Eve to enjoy. These mooncakes are commonly known as "reunion cakes." During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, people in the south of the Yangtze River worshiped the moon with vegetarian food, such as old pumpkins, lotus root, moon cakes, etc., with a bowl of cold water next to it. After worshiping the moon, women and children dipped their fingers in water and applied it to their eyes, wishing them cool eyes (Zhou Zuoren's "The Moon of the Mid-Autumn Festival") . This custom comes from the custom of washing eyes with dew in the middle of August during the Six Dynasties. At that time, what people gave each other as gifts during the Mid-Autumn Festival was not moon cakes, but eye bags filled with herbal dew ("Jingchu Age").

There are different descriptions and understandings of the image of the moon god in different places. In the Tingzhou area of ??Fujian Province, there is a custom of "inviting the Moon Girl" on the Mid-Autumn Festival night. Children set fruit cakes under the moon to worship and give speeches, asking the Moon Girl to predict disasters. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, wealthy families in Zhuji, Zhejiang make large mooncakes mixed with fruits and "fold the cakes to offer the moon, which is called 'Feast for Chang'e'". Every household in Suzhou places a vase of flower-scented wax, without any symbols of the Moon Palace, and prays to the sky. The children "worship under the moon and play in front of the lamp, which is called the Ramadhan Palace." In Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas, there is a custom of "burning incense" during the Mid-Autumn Festival to worship the moon. The so-called bucket incense in Suzhou is made of thin incense threads woven into a bucket shape, with incense crumbs in the middle. The incense shop makes it and sells it to monks and laypeople. People burn it under the moon on the Mid-Autumn Festival night, which is called "burning bucket incense". The incense sticks in Hangzhou are made of paper and made into a bucket shape, with an incense stick in the middle. The height is about two feet. They are used to worship the moon on the Mid-Autumn Festival night. Wu Manyun's "Poetry for Festivals in Jiangxiang": "The word "heart" is burnt to ashes, and the moon wheel is asked to open on the spiritual incense. After all, there are few people in the world, and ten thousand dendrobiums are collected from the cinnamon millet salary." Yangzhou's Xiaoqinhuai River, the Mid-Autumn Festival "supports the Taiyin" ", painted the palace of Qingxu in Guanghan, which is called "Moon Palace Paper"; paper and silk are also used as crowns of idols, and women in plain clothes are arranged on the moon cakes, which are called "Moon Palace People"; then lotus root fruits are sacrificed.

It is worth noting that in previous generations, both men and women worshiped the moon. On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival in the capital of the Song Dynasty, all the families in the city, rich or poor, from children who could walk to teenagers aged 12 or 13, would wear adult clothes and go up to the stairs or in the courtyard to "burn incense and worship the moon, each with their own expectations." The boy hopes to "enter the Toad Palace early and climb up to the fairy laurel", which means asking the moon god to bless him and become famous in the imperial examination as soon as possible. The girl prays for a beautiful face, "May she look like Chang'e and be as round as the pure moon." People in the Song Dynasty valued the beauty of men and women.

After the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the custom of worshiping the moon underwent major changes. Men worshiped the moon less and less, and the moon god gradually became a dedicated object of female worship. There is a saying in Beijing that "men do not worship the moon, and women do not worship the stove." During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, a new seasonal object was added to the Mid-Autumn Festival in Beijing - the colorful rabbit. In the Ming Dynasty, "Mid-Autumn Festival was mostly shaped like a rabbit rolled out of mud, dressed and sitting like a human being, and children worshiped it." In the Qing Dynasty, the jade rabbit was nicknamed "Rabbit Master". People used sand to make white jade rabbits and decorated them with colorful colors. The craftsmanship of Lord Rabbit is exquisite, and the shapes are various, funny and interesting: there are people with umbrellas and well-dressed people pretending to be officials; there are people wearing armor and holding big flags, pretending to be warriors; there are people riding tigers, and there are people sitting quietly. . The big one is three feet high and the small one is less than an inch. People in the capital "gathered in Tianjie under the moon, and the market changed." Lord Rabbit adds a lot of fun to urban life.

The custom of worshiping and worshiping the moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival is also popular among ethnic minorities. When the Oroqen people offer sacrifices to the moon, they put a basin of water in the open space, place offerings, then kneel in front of the basin and bow to the moon.

The Zhuang people in western Guangxi have a more typical activity of "sacrifice to the moon and invite gods". Every year in the middle of August of the lunar calendar, sometimes on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, people set up a table in the open air at the head of the village to place sacrifices and incense burners. On the right side of the table is a A tree branch or bamboo branch with a root height of about one foot symbolizes the social tree and serves as a ladder for the moon god to descend to earth and ascend to heaven. The elements of the ancient moon myth are preserved here. The entire activity includes: inviting the Moon God to come down to earth, with one or two women acting as the Moon God's spokesperson; antiphonal singing between gods and men; fortune-telling by the Moon God; and singers singing songs to send the Moon God back to heaven (see He Xingliang "Chinese Nature Gods and Nature Worship"). It can be seen from this that the ancient custom of worshiping the moon is still passed down among remote ethnic groups. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, people can have direct dialogue and exchanges with the moon god. This is related to the cultural characteristics of ethnic minorities.

Share and give "reunion cakes"

The Mid-Autumn Festival food is moon cakes, which are called "reunion cakes" among the people. The Mid-Autumn Festival is the harvest season. In order to strengthen the connection between family and social members, people give gifts to each other. Mooncakes have become a token of mutual communication and a symbol of good luck.

The shape of moon cakes may have existed in the Song Dynasty. Su Dongpo once praised it in a poem: "Small cakes are like chewing the moon, with crispness and sweetness in the middle." However, according to the literature records, the festival at that time focused on appreciating new things, such as tasting new fruits such as pomegranates, dates, chestnuts, oranges, grapes, etc., and drinking new wines, etc., which meant "tasting in autumn", and mooncakes were not yet regarded as an important food. Seasonal food. The custom of using mooncakes as a special Mid-Autumn Festival food and offering to worship the moon probably began in the Ming Dynasty. In the early Ming Dynasty, there was a custom of eating cakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival, but they were not yet called moon cakes. According to "Guest Words", there was a Taoist named Tieguan in Nanjing who was very skilled in Taoism and could predict the future. Taizu of the Ming Dynasty was dissatisfied with this, so he summoned the Taoist and asked, "What do I need to do today?" He replied, "The prince will bring in cakes at a certain time." It was the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, so Taizu ordered people to lock the Taoist in the room and wait for verification. . At that time, the prince came to offer cakes and food. During the Mid-Autumn Festival in the palace, the prince has to offer mooncakes to his father. Folks in urban and rural areas even use mooncakes as gifts to each other.

Let’s first look at the capital city of the Ming Dynasty where “the furniture of the common people was left behind with mooncakes made of moon cakes”. This kind of noodle cakes vary in size and are called "moon cakes". The production of mooncakes was already very sophisticated in Beijing in the late Ming Dynasty, and the price was not cheap. "Shops use fruit as fillings, and they have strange names and shapes. One cake is worth hundreds of dollars." In the Qing Dynasty, the Mid-Autumn Festival in Beijing included moon cakes in addition to offering incense and lanterns. In the late Qing Dynasty, branded mooncakes appeared in Beijing, and Qianmen Zhimizhai’s mooncakes were “the best in Kyoto”. Generally, mooncakes for the moon are available everywhere. The largest ones have a diameter as long as a ruler, and are painted with patterns such as the moon palace, toads, and jade rabbits. Beijing mooncakes are shared after the sacrifice. Another way to eat them is to save the mooncakes until the end of the year and New Year's Eve. People in Suzhou also use mooncakes as Mid-Autumn Festival gifts to each other. During the Qing Dynasty, Hangzhou still inherited the festival customs from the Ming Dynasty, "eating moon cakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival, and offering sacrifices to the moon at night, which also takes the meaning of the two full moons."

Modern mooncake production has formed regional styles, including Beijing-style mooncakes, Cantonese-style mooncakes, Soviet-style mooncakes, Ningbo-style mooncakes, etc. They all have their own characteristics in mooncake fillings, mooncake shapes and processing methods. Beijing-style mooncakes are filled with puff pastry and rock sugar; Cantonese-style mooncakes are mainly made with syrup dough, and come in two varieties: puff pastry and hard crust, with salty and sweet flavors. The fillings include meat, lotus paste, bean paste, etc.; Suzhou-style mooncakes are also crispy. Peach kernels, melon seeds, and pine nuts are commonly used for the skin and filling of the cakes, along with natural spices such as osmanthus and roses. Ningbo’s Yong-style mooncakes are also filled with puff pastry and mostly use moss vegetables as the filling. Traditional mooncakes are heavy in sugar and oil. In recent years, low-sugar mooncakes filled with fruits have become more popular.

Small mooncakes are given to each other in folk life as a symbol of reunion and a token of kinship affection, thereby reaffirming kinship relationships. There are specific ways to eat mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Generally, mooncakes are cut evenly into several portions and divided equally according to the number of people. Everyone enjoys a piece of mooncake, which symbolizes that family members are part of the reunion. If someone in the family goes out, a piece of mooncake is specially left to symbolize that he has also participated in the family reunion. This mooncake is reserved for him to enjoy when he comes back on New Year's Eve. This way of reuniting families with food is a unique cultural habit of the Chinese people.

Family Reunion

Reunion is the central meaning of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Due to family life, the Chinese have a strong sense of family ethics and attach great importance to kinship and blood ties, thus forming the folk psychology of harmony and reunion earlier. The reunion of family members has become a major event in family life, and folk festivals provide opportunities for people to gather regularly. In traditional New Year festivals, people's requirements for reunion are met to varying degrees, such as the "Reunion" on New Year's Eve and gatherings for drinks on the Double Ninth Festival. The Mid-Autumn Festival is a time when the flowers are in full bloom and the moon is full. "The moon shines on the sea, and the end of the world is at this time." People associate the full moon in the sky with the reunion of people, so the Mid-Autumn Festival was regarded as a special "Reunion Festival" in ancient times. The sense of reunion of the Song people has been related to the Mid-Autumn Festival. The aforementioned urban residents in the Song Dynasty enjoyed the full moon with their families, which reflects this ethical factor. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, due to the influence of Neo-Confucianism, the concept of rural ethnic groups in civil society was strengthened. At the same time, because people became more aware of the power of family society in secular life, people became more emotionally attached to their families. The Mid-Autumn Festival, at the time of the autumn harvest, is a good opportunity to strengthen family ties. "Folks use moon cakes to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, which means reunion" (Mingtian Rucheng's "West Lake Tour Chronicles"). It is worth noting that people pay special attention to the reunion of couples during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Married women have to rush to their parents' home to reunite with their parents during the Mid-Autumn Festival, and they must return to their husband's home to reunite with their husbands on the same day. As the saying goes: "It is better to keep a girl for one autumn than to spend the Mid-Autumn Festival."

Prayer for marriage and children

The Mid-Autumn Festival coincides with the autumn harvest season. While people pay tribute to the gods, they also pray for the power of reproduction.

In ancient times, "union between men and women" was the main personnel activity after the autumn harvest. The child praying ceremony in the ancient autumn society was the time standard for this activity. After the Mid-Autumn Festival appeared, the custom of men and women meeting each other and praying for children was gradually transferred and merged into the Mid-Autumn Festival customs. Women's prayers to the moon and travel under the moon are mostly related to marriage and children. Playing with the moon on the Mid-Autumn Festival night has been popular in the Song Dynasty, and also flourished in the Ming Dynasty, especially in the Suzhou and Hangzhou areas in the south of the Yangtze River. "On the West Lake in Hangzhou, singing together on the Su Di is just like the daytime". The grand night tour in Suzhou can be seen from the description in "Mid-Autumn Night in Tiger Hill" by Zhang Dai of the Ming Dynasty: "In the middle of August in Tiger Hill, there are indigenous people, homeless people, scholars, family members, female musicians, singers, famous prostitutes, opera women, and young folk women. , good girls, bastards, prostitutes, and wandering and evil young men, purgers, helpers, sex boys, and idle people all gather together." After the Qing Dynasty, it was commonly known as "walking on the moon". On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, women could dress up and go out, visit relatives on the moon, or stay in a nunnery and not return late at night. "Walking on the Moon" is a day for folk women to lift their ban, and behind "walking around together" there is an implicit meaning of praying for reproduction. According to Tongzhi's "Jiangxia County Chronicle", the Ziyang Bridge in Jiangxia City was particularly lively on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival. The stone dragon heads on the bridge became the objects of traveling young women competing to touch them in order to obtain the favor of the matchmaker. The meaning of praying for children is very obvious. In modern Nanjing, those who were looking forward to having an heir would first visit the Confucius Temple and then cross the bridge, saying that their wish would come true. In Xiangtan area in modern times, the custom of visiting the pagoda during the Mid-Autumn Festival is the same as "walking on the moon", praying for human reproduction and health. There is a local song: "Visit the pagoda on August 15th, bring incense and candles to worship the Bodhisattva. The old man has green hair. , the offspring will bring wealth, and the guests will give birth to a fat baby, and the girl will be a good person."

"Touching the autumn" or "stealing melons to give children" is a common Mid-Autumn Festival custom in southern China. . On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, people go to the fields to "steal" melons, and then, playing and beating them, they give winter melons or pumpkins painted in the shape of babies to couples who have been infertile for several years, in order to keep them healthy. In Xi'an County, Zhejiang Province, "they secretly pick melons and taros and send them to the bride's house in the pocket of her clothes, saying 'to give birth to a son'". In some places, what is groped at night is not fruits and tiles, but tiles and stones. For example, in Huaining, Anhui Province, "It was evening, and the women in the city went to the Songyang Gate and groped for gravel in front of Baizi'an and by the Lue Bridge. The stones were for men and the tiles were for women." The custom of going to the fields to "steal" melons on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival is also popular in the Lianghu area. Young men and women each have their own choice of where to steal vegetables. They usually go to the garden of the person they love to "steal", laugh and play while stealing, attract their lovers, and enjoy the happy fruits of "stealing".

Burning pagoda lanterns

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, people still had the custom of lighting lanterns on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Mid-Autumn Festival lanterns are different from Lantern Festival lanterns. Pagoda lanterns are lit on the Mid-Autumn Festival night, and they are mainly popular in the south. Pagoda lamps are lamps built in the shape of pagodas by village children picking up rubble. In the Qing Dynasty, Suzhou villagers built a seven-level pagoda out of tiles in the wilderness, with Ksitigarbha in the middle and lanterns burning around it, which is called "pagoda lantern". Children in Guangzhou burn "fan tower lanterns" made of broken tiles; there are also pomelo peel lanterns, which use red pomelo peel to carve various figures, flowers and plants, with a glass lamp placed in the middle, which emits red light. Another kind is the jasmine lamp, which is full of fragrance. In Anhui, Jiangxi, Hunan and other places, there is a custom of building pagoda lanterns. In Qingjiang, Jiangxi Province, many melons are used as lanterns during the Mid-Autumn Festival, and their shape resembles the moon. Children pile rubble to make a pagoda (pagoda), place firewood in the middle and light it, "all sides are exquisite, like a flaming tree". The pagoda in Xiao'er, Ningxiang, Hunan, was burned in the middle, "taking the red color as a good omen". In Lujiang, Anhui, "children pile rubbles into pagodas and beat gongs and drums, which is called pagoda making." These folk behaviors of burning tower lanterns or making pagodas have the meaning of seeking peace of life with the help of Buddhist power.

Account Settlement Day

The night of the Mid-Autumn Festival is regarded by literati as a good night for admiring the moon. In the eyes of farmers, it is a time for divining the weather and astronomical phenomena in the coming year. In the eyes of women, it is This rare night of fun is a day for settling money and debts among industrial, commercial and private households. "All money and debts must be settled on May and August festivals, which is called festival, and the Mid-Autumn Festival is especially regarded as the Dragon Boat Festival." Heavy" (Shang Binghe's "A Study of Social Customs and Things in Past Dynasties"). The Mid-Autumn Festival is the most important accounting day of the year, and it is also the time when bosses renew or terminate contracts with employees; debtors look for ways to get through this festival with a sad face, and store clerks are also worried about being told not to come back tomorrow after the evening feast. For these people, In other words, the Mid-Autumn Festival is not that exciting. For them, celebrating the festival means passing a test, so the term "Festival" is very appropriate. The Mid-Autumn Festival here has evolved into a time mark for the industrial and commercial society, showing the regulatory significance of the festival to the economy and society.

Festivals are the highlights of daily life, and festival culture is the focus of the spirit of the times. The Mid-Autumn Festival has experienced the elegant interest of literati in appreciating the moon, the interest of folk in worshiping the moon, and the vulgar interest of eating moon cakes but not looking at the moon. The form of festivals and customs has undergone significant changes from ancient times to the present. The bright moon is still there, but people's hearts are no longer the same. A history of the evolution of Mid-Autumn Festival customs is also a history of changes in the mentality of the Chinese people.