Chinese Mid-Autumn Day holiday is coming this weekend. It's a holiday associated with long history and traditiaonal chinese cultures.According to wikipedia, The Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節, zhōng qiū jié), also known as the Moon Festival, is a popular Chinese celebration of abundance and togetherness, dating back over 3,000 years to Zhou Dynasty. Several cultures activities related to this holiday would be:
Eating moon cakes outside under the moon
Putting pomelo rinds on one's head
Carrying brightly lit lanterns
Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e
Planting Mid-Autumn trees
Collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members
Lighting lanterns on towers
Fire Dragon Dances
Food offerings -- including moon cakes, apples, pears, peaches, grapes, pomegranates, watermelons, oranges, and so on -- are placed on an altar set up in the courtyard. of all these foods, moon cakes and watermelons (cut into the shape of a lotus) are indispensable for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Bathing in the silver moonlight, the families will sit together and take turns to worship the moon, chatting and sharing the moon offerings. It's a time for family reunion in China.
Chinese famous Poems that express a feeling of missing home and family members.
The Yo-Mei Mountain Moonby Li Bai
- The autumn moon is half round above the Yo-mei Mountain;
- The pale light falls in and flows with the water of the Ping-chiang River.
- Tonight I leave Ching-chi of limpid stream for the three Canyons.
- And glide down past Yu-chow, thinking of you whom I can not see.
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