Customs and habits of Mid-Autumn Festival

The main customs of Mid-Autumn Festival:

1, eat moon cakes

According to Luo Zhong's records, Tang Xizong ate moon cakes on Mid-Autumn Festival, which was very delicious, so he ordered the chef to package moon cakes in HongLing and give them to the new Jinshi. This may be the earliest record of moon cakes we can see. In the Song Dynasty, moon cakes were called "lotus leaf", "golden flower" and "hibiscus", and their production methods were more exquisite. The poet Su Dongpo praised in a poem: "Small cakes are like chewing the moon, and there is fullness in the crisp." Crisp is crisp, pulp is sugar. It tastes sweet, crisp, fragrant and delicious.

Step 2 enjoy the moon

Appreciating the moon comes from offering sacrifices to the moon, and serious sacrifices have become relaxed pleasures. Folk Mid-Autumn Festival activities began in Wei and Jin Dynasties, but they did not become a custom. In the Tang Dynasty, it was quite popular to enjoy and play with the moon in the Mid-Autumn Festival. Many poets wrote poems about the moon in their masterpieces. In the Song Dynasty, the Mid-Autumn Festival centered on appreciating the moon was formed and officially designated as the Mid-Autumn Festival. Different from the Tang people, the Song people appreciate the moon more because they feel hurt by things, and often compare human affairs with the lack of rain or shine. Even on the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, the bright moon can't hide the sadness of Song people. But for the Song people, the Mid-Autumn Festival has another form, that is, it is a secular and joyful festival: "Before the Mid-Autumn Festival, shops sold new wine, your house decorated pavilions, the people competed for food and play with the moon, the songs were heard far away, and the play was played until dawn." The Mid-Autumn Festival in the Song Dynasty was a sleepless night. The night market is open all night, and there are endless tourists playing with the moon.

3. Sacrifice the moon

In ancient times, there was a custom of "autumn and dusk". The moon at night is to worship the moon god. Put a big incense table, with moon cakes, watermelons, apples, red dates, plums, grapes and other sacrifices, among which moon cakes and watermelons are absolutely indispensable, and watermelons should be cut into lotus shapes.

Under the moon, put the moon statue in the direction of the moon, and the red candle burns high. The whole family takes turns in Yue Bai, and then the housewife cuts the reunion moon cakes. If people are laid off in advance, the number of people in the whole family will be counted, including those at home and those from other places. You can't lay off more or less, but the size should be the same.

Step 4 light the lamp

The internal combustion candles of Mid-Autumn Night Lights are tied to bamboo poles with ropes, hung high on tile eaves or terraces, or hung on the heights of houses in zigzag or various shapes with small lights, commonly known as "Mid-Autumn Festival on trees" or "Mid-Autumn Festival vertically". Rich people can hang lights as high as tens of feet. Families gather under the lamp to enjoy drinking, and ordinary people erect a flagpole and two lanterns to enjoy themselves. The city is full of lights and glass. It seems that since ancient times, the custom of burning lanterns in Mid-Autumn Festival seems to be second only to Lantern Festival in scale.

Step 5 observe the tides

"Know the jade rabbit is very round, September has frost cold. Send a message to close the door and close the key, and the night tide stays in 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, Zhejiang Mid-Autumn Festival was another Mid-Autumn Festival activity besides watching the moon. The custom of watching tide in Mid-Autumn Festival has a long history, which is described in detail in Mei Cheng's Seven Mao Fu in Han Dynasty. After the Han Dynasty, Mid-Autumn Festival became more popular. There are also records of watching the tide in Zhu Tinghuan's Ming Bu Wulin Past and Zi Mu's Meng Lianglu. The grand occasion of tide watching described in these two books shows that tide watching reached its peak in the Mid-Autumn Festival in the Song Dynasty.

6. Play a prostitute

Male prostitutes are clay toys for children to play and entertain during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Its appearance is a human with a rabbit mouth and rabbit ears. There are two long ears on the head and a three-petal rabbit mouth. Other places are no different from people. At present, there are no traces of male prostitutes in the ordinary market, but as folk cultural relics, they are exhibited in places like folk museums or sold in handicraft shops. Young people don't know much about it, but old people will say.

7. Go to the moon

On the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, there is also a special activity called "Walking the Moon". In the bright moonlight, people wear gorgeous clothes, travel in groups of three or five, or go boating on the Qinhuai River, or go upstairs to watch the moonlight, talking and laughing. In the Ming Dynasty, Nanjing had a building to look at the moon and a bridge to play with the moon. In the Qing Dynasty, there was the Moon Tower under Lion Mountain, which was a scenic spot for tourists to enjoy the moon. The Moon Building in Mochou Lake Park, built after liberation, has become a new attraction for citizens to enjoy the moon. In the old days, Nanjing people had a special prayer of "walking on the moon": any married woman without a son would go to the Confucius Temple and then cross a bridge. According to legend, there would be "the joy of dreaming of bears" (meaning giving birth to boys).

8. Stealing onions and vegetables

According to legend, if an unmarried girl steals vegetables or onions from other gardens on the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, it means that she will meet a Mr Right in the future. There is a saying in Taiwan Province Province that "steal onions and marry a good husband; Stealing vegetables and marrying a good husband "refers to this custom.

9. Eat ducks, snails and taro.

Mulao people in southwest China pay attention to buying cakes to kill ducks on this day. Osmanthus duck, salted duck and Zhangcha duck in Nanjing often sell well at this time. If you don't find anything, it's probably not bad to bring a Beijing roast duck home to eat. People believe that snails can improve their eyesight in the Mid-Autumn Festival. After investigation, vitamin A contained in snail meat is an important substance of eye visual pigment, which shows that this statement is reasonable. But why do you have to eat it on the Mid-Autumn Festival? It was pointed out that before and after the Mid-Autumn Festival, snails were empty and there were no snails in the abdomen, so the meat was particularly fat. Nowadays, in Guangzhou, many families have the habit of frying snails in the Mid-Autumn Festival.

10, drink osmanthus wine

Every Mid-Autumn Festival night, people look up at the bright moon, smell osmanthus fragrance, think of WU GANG cutting osmanthus flowers, drink a glass of osmanthus wine, celebrate the sweetness of the family and get together, which becomes a holiday enjoyment. Osmanthus fragrans not only can be seen, but also can be eaten. In Qu Yuan's "Nine Songs", there are some poems, such as "supporting the horse and fighting, drinking cinnamon pulp" and "drinking cinnamon pulp". It can be seen that China has been drinking osmanthus wine for quite a long time. But now, people mostly use red wine instead.