Monday 15 September 2008

Chinese Moon Festival!!

The Chinese Lantern Festival is held on the 15 day of the first lunar month. In my country, South Korea the festival is called "chuseok" as a harvest festival, and is the second biggest public holiday.

The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September in the Gregorian calendar), a date that parallels the Autumn and Spring Equinoxes of the solar calendar. The traditional food of this festival is the ricecake, of which there are many different varieties.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar (the other being the Chinese Lunar New Year), and is a legal holiday in several countries. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Traditionally, on this day, family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat mooncakes(rice cakes in Korea) and pomeloes together. Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as:

Eating moon cakes outside under the moon(maybe China only)
Carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, floating sky lanterns
Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e (simplified Chinese: 嫦娥; traditional Chinese: 嫦娥; pinyin: cháng'é)
Planting Mid-Autumn trees
Collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members
Fire Dragon Dances
Shops selling mooncakes(ricecakes in Korea), before the festival, often display pictures of Chang'e floating to the moon.

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