8 facts about the Mid-Autumn festival

In 2020, the Mid-Autumn Festival or Lantern Festival will fall on Thursday 1st October. It’s celebrated in many countries across East and South East Asia and is a key festival in the Lunar calendar, usually falling around the autumn equinox. Check out our quick facts to this enchanting festival below.

1. It’s a festival to celebrate the harvest. Traditionally, this time of the year would be when the harvest work is finished, signalling the time to spend with loved ones and appreciate life’s small pleasures together over a good meal. People would give thanks for the harvest and pray for the following year’s harvest to be even more bountiful. For those who are separated and unable to celebrate together, it can be a comfort to know that they are looking up at the same moon as far away family and friends.

2. The fundamental concepts of the Mid-Autumn Festival are: gathering, giving thanks and praying to/venerating the ancestors.

3. It’s celebrated in many different countries in various ways, from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Tibet, Vietnam, Singapore, North and South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Cambodia, Thailand to the Philippines.

4. Like most Lunar festivals, food is a central part of the celebration. 

Typically, people eat and give each other mooncakes, a type of pastry originating from China, but which is widely consumed in many ESEA countries. They are traditionally round, with a thick filling made from bean or lotus seed paste, and may contain a salted egg yolk filling that symbolises the moon. They are eaten in wedges, usually served alongside tea. Mooncake pastries often have intricate designs and writing on them that signifies the bakery of origin and flavour, and come in ornate packaging that make them an important gift. Because of the time and effort that goes into making, decorating and packaging mooncakes, they tend to be a delicacy that are gifted to family and friends, rather than something people buy for themselves.

But it’s not just about the mooncakes! During Japan’s autumn Tsukimi festival, for example, people celebrate by eating Tsukimi dango, sweet dumplings, and display seasonal produce, such as sweet potatoes, as offerings to the moon.

5. It’s a very old tradition. Lunar autumn festivals have been celebrated in China since the early Tang dynasty, and in Japan dating back to the Heian era.

6. There are numerous myths and legends surrounding the Mid-Autumn festival. For example, in Vietnam, people tell the story of Chú Cuội, a poor woodcutter who discovered a magic Banyan tree that carried him up into the sky and into the moon, where he still remains. Every year, children light lanterns for him to show him the way back to Earth.

In China, there is an old folk tale that describes how Ming revolutionaries, fighting against Mongolian rule, used mooncakes to pass secret messages, hidden within their fillings, to share information about plans and meetings. Others say that the hidden messages were printed on the mooncakes themselves, which came in boxes of four. To read the message, each of the four was cut into a further four parts, and the resultant pieces were then arranged together. Finally, the pieces of mooncake were then eaten to destroy any evidence.

7. A lion dance or unicorn dance (or snow lion dance in parts of Tibet) is usually performed at public celebrations, to bring good luck and fortune, with the costumes varying in appearance and dancing style from country to country.

8. Ancestor worship is an important part of the festival. In North and South Korea, for example, people will try to travel back to their hometowns to reunite with family and honour their ancestors together in a special memorial ceremony. Across most ESEA countries where ancestor veneration is practised, people will also visit the graves of family members to sweep them, pray and place offerings to the ancestors.

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