What is the custom of worshipping rabbits in Mid-Autumn Festival?

The most distinctive Mid-Autumn Festival custom in Beijing is to beat male prostitutes and worship male prostitutes.

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. Big round eyes, triangular eyebrows, pale face, pink face, childish expression and a heroic inspiration, very cute. Typical or orthodox male prostitutes are all dressed up as military commanders: wearing a golden helmet and a red shirt, the older one has an umbrella on his back, the younger one has two flags on his back, a knife in his hand, a mortar in his left hand, a pestle in his right hand, or a pestle in his arms, or nothing in his hand.

Some male prostitutes also have horses, such as Hei Hu, white elephant, lion, unicorn, camel, peacock, phoenix, crane, deer, horse and cow. At first glance, it is a commanding general; Look carefully, it is a gentle and naive rabbit-billed child.

In addition to the dramatized military commanders such as male prostitutes, there are also people who live in daily clothes, who are taken to bear the burden, sharpen their knives, sit around, etc., and are still rabbit-faced. The other kind is grandma rabbit, who imitates women's fashion and manners, combs the fashionable bun at that time, and couples with male prostitutes. There is also a male prostitute with a loud mouth. The upper lip is movable with a thread in the middle. When the mouth is pulled, it moves, and the mouth is empty. Some of them have hanging wires on their arms. When they pull the wire, their arms move up and down, as if they were throwing drugs.

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. Mr. Qi Gong once recalled: "When I was a child, I liked male prostitutes. When I was young, my aunt raised a big prostitute for me, taller than a bed, more than one meter tall. I always liked it. Later, I went to Dongan market. On both sides of the whole street, around the Mid-Autumn Festival in August, every shop was filled with male prostitutes, large and small, so exquisite. "