The custom of autumn

Sacrifice the moon to Yue Bai to celebrate the harvest.

Share and feed "reunion cakes"

family reunion

Pray for marriage and children

Burning pagoda lamp

Account settlement date

Traditional customs of Mid-Autumn Festival

Sacrifice the moon to Yue Bai to celebrate the harvest.

The Mid-Autumn Festival in the Tang and Song Dynasties is a universal social entertainment festival. The main activities of the Mid-Autumn Festival are enjoying and playing with the moon. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the nature of festivals changed, and people also enjoyed the moon, but it seemed that they paid more attention to the sacred significance of the moon god and the ethical and economic relations between people in the real society. Mid-Autumn Festival is the harvest season. People use the custom of Mid-Autumn Festival to celebrate the harvest. The seasonal fruit when offering sacrifices to the moon is not only offering sacrifices to the moon, but also enjoying the fruits of labor.

In the Ming dynasty, Beijingers sacrificed the moon on August 15. People bought a special kind of "Moonlight Paper" in the market, which is a kind of god with a statue of Moonlight Bodhisattva on it: Moonlight Bodhisattva sat on the lotus seat, and a jade rabbit stood by like a human being, pestling medicine in a mortar. This Moonlight Bodhisattva is three inches small and more than a foot long, and its exquisite figure is golden. People in Beijing set up a statue of Moonlight Bodhisattva for round fruits, cakes and watermelons, to be cut into the shape of lotus. At night, when the moon rises, people offer sacrifices and worship to the moon. After the worship, they incinerated the moonlight paper, and the offerings they took out were generally shared by their families. By the Qing Dynasty, the worship of the moon in Beijing had changed. The Moon God was presented by the Taoist Temple with the title "Yao Su Taiyin Xing Junyue Palace". On this day, more "moonlight horses" are sold in shops. They are seven or eight feet long and two or three feet short. There are two flags on it, red, green or yellow, dedicated to the moon. After the sacrifice, they were incinerated with paper ingots and paper money.

Sacrificing the moon and Yue Bai is a common custom in Mid-Autumn Festival in Ming and Qing Dynasties. There is a saying in Qing Dynasty: "On August 15th, the moon is full, and watermelon and moon cakes are presented to God." There were special moon cakes in Qing Dynasty, which were "round and big" than the daily moon cakes. Specially made moon cakes are usually shared by family members after the Mid-Autumn Festival, and some are reserved for New Year's Eve. This kind of moon cake is commonly known as "reunion cake". There are old pumpkins, lotus roots and moon cakes in the south of the Yangtze River in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with a bowl of cold water beside it. When women and children Yue Bai finished painting, they dipped their fingers in water to draw their eyes, hoping that they would get cold (Moon on Mid-Autumn Festival by Zhou Zuoren). This custom originated in the Six Dynasties when people washed their eyes with dew in mid-August. At that time, people gave each other not moon cakes, but eye bags filled with grass dew (Jingchu Years).

Different places have different descriptions and understandings of the image of luna. In Tingzhou, Fujian, there is a custom of "inviting the moon aunt" on Mid-Autumn Festival night. The children put fruit cakes in the moon to give a speech and invited Aunt Moon to predict the disaster. Large families in Zhuji, Zhejiang Province make big moon cakes on the Mid-Autumn Festival, which are mixed with melons and fruits. "The overlapping case is the moon, which is called' feast Chang 'e'". Every household in Suzhou put a bottle of flower wax, without the symbol of the moon palace, and looked up at the sky to worship. Young children are playing in front of lights in Yue Bai, which is called Ramadan Palace. Jiangsu and Zhejiang have the custom of "burning incense" in the Mid-Autumn Festival. The so-called barrel incense in Suzhou is to use thin thread incense and fill the middle with fragrant crumbs. After the incense shop is finished, it is sold to monks and lay people. People burn it under the moon on the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, which is called "burning barrels of incense". Dou Xiang in Hangzhou is made of paper paste into a barrel shape with incense in the middle, about two feet high. It is used to worship the moon on the night of Mid-Autumn Festival. Wu Manyun's poem "Jiangxiang Festival": "The words in my heart burn to pieces, and the moon is fragrant. "After all, there are few people in the world, and your salary is 10,000." Small Qinhuai River in Yangzhou, the Mid-Autumn Festival "supporting the Taiyin", painted as a cold empty palace, named "Moon Palace Paper"; Paper silk is also used as the crown belt of idols, and women dressed in plain clothes are arranged on moon cakes, which are called "moon palace people"; Then worship the lotus root fruit.

It is worth noting that in the last generation, Yue Bai was worshipped by both men and women. On the Mid-Autumn Festival night in the capital of song dynasty, all families in the city, rich or poor, from walking children to teenagers aged 12 or 13, have to wear adult clothes, climb stairs or "burn incense in Yue Bai" in court. The boy expected to "leave themoon early and climb the immortal laurel", which means to ask the moon god to bless the imperial examination as soon as possible. The girl prayed for a beautiful face, "May it look like Chang 'e and be as round as a clean moon". Song people value the beauty of talented women.

After the Ming and Qing Dynasties, great changes have taken place in the custom of offering sacrifices to the moon. The number of male Yue Bai decreased, and the moon god gradually became a special object of female worship. There is a saying in Beijing that "men don't go to Yue Bai, and women don't offer sacrifices to stoves". During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, a new seasonal item-colored rabbits was added to the Mid-Autumn Festival in Beijing. In the Ming Dynasty, "Mid-Autumn Festival is mostly in the shape of a mud rabbit, disguised as a human figure, worshipped by children". In Qing Dynasty, Jade Rabbit was nicknamed "male prostitute". People made white Jade Rabbit out of sand and decorated it with colorful colors. Male prostitutes are skilled in production and funny in various shapes: they have umbrellas, are well dressed and pretend to be officials; Some people wear armor, hold flags and dress up as warriors; And riding a tiger, sit-in demonstrations. The big one is three feet high and the small one is less than an inch. Beijingers "gather in the sky and the moon, and the market is easy." Male prostitutes add a lot of interest to street life.

Mid-Autumn Festival and Yue Bai are also very popular among ethnic minorities. The Oroqen people put a basin of clear water in the open space when offering sacrifices to the moon, and then knelt in front of the basin and bowed to the moon. The activity of "offering sacrifices to the moon and asking god" of Zhuang nationality in western Guangxi is more typical. Every year in the middle of August in the summer calendar, some are on the Mid-Autumn Festival night. People set up a sacrificial platform in the open air at the end of the village for offering sacrifices and incense burners. On the right side of the table stands a branch or bamboo branch about a foot high, which symbolizes the community tree and is also a ladder for the moon god to descend to earth. There are ancient moon myth factors preserved here. The whole activity includes: inviting the moon god to descend to earth, with one or two women as the spokespersons of the moon god; God and man sing to each other; Luna divination fortune-telling; The singer sings a mantra song and sends the moon god back to heaven (see He's China Nature God and Nature Worship). It can be seen that the ancient custom of offering sacrifices to the moon is still circulating among remote ethnic groups, and people can also have direct dialogue and exchanges with the moon god during the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is related to the cultural characteristics of ethnic minorities.

Share and feed "reunion cakes"

Making food moon cakes on Mid-Autumn Festival is called "reunion cake" among the people. Mid-Autumn Festival is the harvest season. In order to strengthen the ties between family members and social members and give gifts to each other, moon cakes become tokens of mutual exchange and auspicious symbols.

The shape of moon cakes may have existed in the Song Dynasty. Su Dongpo once wrote a poem praising: "A small cake is like chewing the moon, and there is a crisp in it." However, according to the literature, at that time, the emphasis was on appreciating new things, such as tasting pomegranate, jujube, chestnut, orange, grape and drinking new wine, which meant "tasting in autumn", and moon cakes were not regarded as important seasonal foods. The custom of using moon cakes as special food and offerings for the Mid-Autumn Festival may have begun in the Ming Dynasty. In the early Ming Dynasty, the Mid-Autumn Festival had the custom of eating cakes, but they were not called moon cakes. According to "Extra Words from Guests", there was an iron-crowned Taoist in Nanjing, who was skillful in Taoism and could predict the future. Ming Taizu disagreed, so he summoned the Taoist priest and asked, "What can I do today?" Yes, he said, "The prince will have a cake." It was the Mid-Autumn Festival, and Mao ordered the Taoist priest to be locked in his room for verification. At that time, the prince really came to deliver cakes. The prince will present moon cakes to his father during the Mid-Autumn Festival. People in urban and rural areas feed moon cakes to each other as holiday gifts.

Let's look at the capital of the Ming Dynasty first, "the furniture of ordinary people, making cakes on the moon". This kind of bread comes in different sizes and is called "moon cake". At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the mooncake making in Beijing was very exquisite, and the price was not cheap. "Shoppers are filled with fruits with different names, and a cake is worth hundreds of yuan." In the Qing Dynasty, the Mid-Autumn Festival in Beijing included not only incense lamps, but also reunion moon cakes. Brand moon cakes appeared in Beijing in the late Qing Dynasty, and Qianmen Zhimeizhai moon cakes were "the first in Kyoto". Generally, there are moon cakes everywhere, which are more than a foot in diameter and painted with moon palace, toad, jade rabbit and other patterns. There is a way to eat moon cakes in Beijing after the sacrifice. Another way to eat it is to save it for your family to share on New Year's Eve. This is called reunion cake. Suzhou people also regard moon cakes as Mid-Autumn Festival objects and give each other heritage. In the Qing Dynasty, Hangzhou also inherited the festival customs of the Ming Dynasty, "Eating moon cakes in the Mid-Autumn Festival and offering sacrifices to the moon at night also means bimonthly".

Modern moon cake production has formed a regional style, including Beijing-style moon cakes, Guangdong-style moon cakes, Soviet-style moon cakes and Yong-style moon cakes, which have their own characteristics in filling, modeling and processing methods. Beijing-style moon cakes are cakes and rock sugar fillings; Cantonese-style moon cakes are mainly made of sugar water dough, including crispy and hard crust, salty and sweet, and the fillings are meat, lotus seed paste and red bean paste. Su-style moon cakes are also very crisp. Peach kernel, melon seeds and pine nuts are commonly used in cake stuffing, with natural spices such as osmanthus flowers and roses. Ningbo-style moon cakes in Ningbo are also crispy, and there is often moss in them. Traditional moon cakes are rich in sugar and heavy in oil. In recent years, low-sugar moon cakes with fruit stuffing have become popular.

As a symbol of reunion in folk life, small moon cakes are used as tokens of affection to feed each other, thus realizing the reconfirmation of affection. There are specific ways to eat moon cakes in Mid-Autumn Festival. Generally, everyone cuts the moon cakes evenly and distributes them equally according to the population. Everyone enjoys a piece of moon cake, which symbolizes that family members are part of the reunion. If someone at home goes out, he will leave a copy specially to symbolize that he has also participated in the family reunion, and this moon cake will be left for him to enjoy on New Year's Eve. This way of reuniting families with food is a unique cultural habit of China people.

family reunion

Reunion is the core meaning of Mid-Autumn Festival custom.

Due to family life, China people have strong family ethics and attach importance to kinship and consanguinity, thus forming a folk psychology of harmonious reunion earlier. The reunion of family members has become a major event in family life, and folk festivals provide people with opportunities to get together regularly. In traditional festivals, people's requirements for reunion are met to varying degrees, such as the "Year of the Group" on New Year's Eve and the gathering of drinks on the Double Ninth Festival. The Mid-Autumn Festival is a full moon. "The moon, now round at sea, illuminates the whole heaven". 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 reunion consciousness of the Song people has always been related to the Mid-Autumn Festival order. The above-mentioned urban residents in the Song Dynasty enjoyed the moon with their families, which reflected this ethical factor. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, due to the influence of Neo-Confucianism, the concept of rural people in civil society was strengthened, and at the same time, because people were more aware of the power of family society in secular life, people were more attached to their families ideologically and emotionally. The Mid-Autumn Festival during the autumn harvest is a good opportunity to strengthen the ties between relatives. "In Mid-Autumn Festival, people take moon cakes as their legacy and take the meaning of reunion" (Tian Ming Yucheng's Notes on Visiting the West Lake). It is worth noting that the Mid-Autumn Festival pays special attention to the reunion of husband and wife. Married women have to rush to their parents' home to reunite with their husbands on the Mid-Autumn Festival, and they must return to their husbands' home to reunite with their husbands on the same day. As the saying goes, "It is better to spend the Mid-Autumn Festival than to keep a girl for an autumn".

Pray for marriage and children

Mid-Autumn Festival is the harvest season in autumn. While rewarding the gods, the people also pray for the power of reproduction.

In ancient times, "the combination of men and women" was the main personnel activity after the autumn harvest, and the blessing ceremony of the ancient autumn society was the time standard of this activity. After the Mid-Autumn Festival, men and women met, and the custom of praying for children gradually shifted and merged into the Mid-Autumn Festival custom. Women's prayers for the moon and their trips under the moon are mostly related to marrying women. Playing with the moon in mid-autumn night has been popular in Song Dynasty and flourished in Ming Dynasty, especially in Suzhou and Hangzhou in the south of the Yangtze River, and the West Lake in Hangzhou is "above Su Causeway, no different from daytime". The grand night outing in Suzhou was described by Zhang Dai of the dynasty in Autumn Night at Tiger Hill: "In August and a half in Tiger Hill, there are aborigines, floating houses, literati, family members, female musicians, geisha, famous prostitutes, opera girls, folk young women, virtuous women, young children, child molesters, juvenile delinquents, diners, idlers and prostitutes. After the Qing Dynasty, it was commonly known as "walking on the moon". On the Mid-Autumn Festival night, women can dress up and go out, visit relatives under the moon, or stay in buddhist nun until late at night. " "Walking on the Moon" is the day when folk women are released from the ban, and the meaning of praying for reproduction is hidden behind "wandering together". According to Tongzhi's "Jiangxia County Records", Ziyang Bridge in Jiangxia City is particularly lively on the Mid-Autumn Festival night, and the stone dragon head on the bridge has become the object of touching each other by young women who travel, in order to win the favor of media gods and pray for children. In modern Nanjing, people who wish to have children first visit the Confucius Temple and then cross the bridge and say yes. In modern Xiangtan area, the custom of worshipping the pagoda in Mid-Autumn Festival is the same as "walking on the moon", praying for human beings to thrive and be healthy. There is a local song that sings: "Visit the stupa on August 15th and bring incense to worship the Bodhisattva. Old people have green hair, and later children have wealth. Tang Ke gave birth to a fat doll, and the sisters are all good people. "

"Touching the autumn" or "stealing melons to send children" is a popular custom of praying for children in the Mid-Autumn Festival in southern China. On the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, people "steal" melons in the fields, and then give them to couples who are infertile after several years of marriage, blowing and beating. Xi' an County, Zhejiang Province "steals melons and taro, and sends them to her parents with clothes and bags, saying' Give a child'". In some places, it is not melons and fruits that are groped at night, but tiles and stones. For example, in Huaining, Anhui, at dusk, women in the city lead to Zongyangmen. On the banks of Baizi Bank and Crane Bridge, they groped for gravel. The stone was male and the tile was female. "The custom of' stealing' melons in the fields on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival is also very popular in the two lakes region. Young men and women have their own choices about where to steal melons and vegetables. Generally, they steal from the right person's garden, laughing and slapping when stealing, attracting their own couples and sharing the happy fruits of stealing.

Burning pagoda lamp

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there was a folk custom of burning lanterns on the night of Mid-Autumn Festival.

Mid-Autumn Festival lanterns are different from Lantern Festival lanterns. Pagoda lights are lit on the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, which is mainly popular in the south. Pagoda lamp is that the children in the village pick up rubble and build a pagoda-shaped lamp. In the Qing Dynasty, villagers in Suzhou used tiles to build a seven-level pagoda in the wild. In the middle of the tower is the Tibetan king, surrounded by lights, which are called "tower lights". Guangzhou children burn "Fanta lamps" and exchange them with broken tiles; There is also a pomelo peel lamp, carved with red pomelo peel, with a glass lamp in the middle, glowing red. The other is a jasmine lamp, which smells delicious. In Anhui, Jiangxi, Hunan and other places, there is a custom of building pagoda lights. In Qingjiang, Jiangxi, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, people often make lanterns with melons, which look like the moon. The children piled up the rubble to make a floating picture (stupa), put firewood in it and lit it, "exquisite in all directions, like a fire tree." In Ningxiang, Hunan Province, children piled pagodas and burned them in the middle, "red is a good omen". Lujiang, Anhui Province, "Children pile rubble for floating pictures and knock gongs and drums, which is called pagoda." These folk behaviors of burning tower lights or disturbing towers have the significance of seeking life safety with the help of Buddhism.

Account settlement date

Mid-Autumn Festival night is a good night to enjoy the moon in the eyes of literati, a rare night to swim in the eyes of women when farmers predict the weather in the coming year, but a day to liquidate money and debts in the eyes of industrial and commercial households. "All money and debts must be settled on May and August, which is called the Festival, and the Mid-Autumn Festival is particularly important" (Textual Research on Social Customs and Things in Shang Dynasties). Mid-Autumn Festival is the most important accounting day in a year, and it is also the time for the boss to renew or terminate the contract with his employees. The debtor pulled a long face and tried his best to get through the festival. Shopkeepers are also worried that they will be told not to come back tomorrow after the dinner. For these people, the Mid-Autumn Festival is not so exciting. For them, the holiday is to go through customs, so the term "holiday holiday" is very appropriate. Mid-Autumn Festival has evolved into a time mark of industrial and commercial society here, showing the significance of festivals in regulating economy and society.

Festivals are the highlights of daily life, and festival customs and culture are the concentrated expression of the spirit of the times. The Mid-Autumn Festival experienced the elegant taste of literati appreciating the moon, the taste of folk Yue Bai, and the vulgar taste of eating moon cakes without appreciating the moon. Since ancient times, great changes have taken place in the form of festival customs. The moon is still bright, and the heart is not there. A history of the evolution of Mid-Autumn Festival customs is also a history of the change of China people's mentality.