Why do you eat ducks in Guangxi Ghost Festival?

Duck is eaten on Ghost Festival in Guangxi to kill ghosts.

The 15th day of the seventh lunar month is the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival in China, also called July 30th, Ghost Festival, Local Officials' Day and so on. In some places, Shangsi Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day Festival, Zhongyuan Festival and Han Festival are also called "Four Ghost Festivals". On this day, people should prepare sacrificial incense and sacrifices to worship their ancestors. Mid-Autumn Festival is called "Ghost Festival" and "July 30th" in Guangxi. People in Guangxi will choose to eat ducks on Halloween. It turns out that "duck" means "pressure", which is homophonic. Eating ducks is to crush ghosts.

In ancient times, people thought that ghosts were the continuation of life. When a man dies, he becomes a ghost and goes to the underworld. Only on July 15 can they return to this world to visit their relatives. Therefore, on July 15, people will set off lanterns, set off river lanterns and burn paper money to worship their ancestors and pay homage to their deceased relatives. Therefore, Ghost Festival is a festival for people to worship ghosts. Of course, although festivals contain some feudal superstitions, our ancestor worship is a kind of inheritance of traditional culture.

The significance of Mid-Autumn Festival

From the legends about July and a half, we can deeply understand that the sacrifice in July and a half has dual meanings, one is to show the filial piety of remembering ancestors, and the other is to carry forward the righteous act of pushing oneself and others and being charitable. This is all from the perspective of compassion, which is very human. So while celebrating the Central Plains, we should get rid of the ghost's point of view and look forward to mutual love.

As far as its cultural connotation is concerned, July 30th is also one of the traditional ancestor worship festivals in China, and its culture reflects a belief. July and a half belong to intangible cultural heritage, which is a kind of culture and a tradition of remembering ancestors in ancient and modern times. This tradition embodies the ancient people's thought of "being cautious to the end and pursuing the distance", and its cultural core is to respect the ancestors and do filial piety.

Reference to the above content: Baidu Encyclopedia-Zhongyuan Festival