What is Mid- Autumn Festival?

The Mid- Autumn Festival is a popular harvest festival 
celebrated by Chinese and Vietnamese people, 
dating back over 3,000 years to moon worship in China's Shang Dynasty. 
In Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines, it is also sometimes 
referred to as the Lantern Festival or Mooncake Festival. 
The Mid-Autumn Festival is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calender, 
which is in September or early October in the Gregorian calender. 
It is a date that parallels the autumnal equinox of the solar calender, 
when the moon is at its fullest and roundest. 
The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, 
of which there are many different varieties. 
The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the few most important holidays in the Chinese calendar, 
the others being Chinese New Year and Winter Solstice, 
and is a legal holiday in several countries. 
Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. 
Traditionally on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire 
the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, 
and eat moon cakes and pomelos under the moon together. 
Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs such as
carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, floating sky lanterns,
Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e,
Collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members.
Shops selling mooncakes before the festival often display pictures of Chang'e floating to the moon.


Let have a look on
Stories of the Mid- Autumn Festival:


Long time ago, there were 10 suns in the sky. They burnt all the plants on the earth. People were dying. One day, a hero whose name was Hou Yi used his bow and arrows to shoot down nine of them. All the people on the earth were saved.


One day, the queen of heaven gave Hou Yi a bottle elixir that could make Hou Yi become an immortal, but the elixir was only efficacious for one person. Hou Yi did want to become an immortal, but he wanted to stay with his beautiful wife Chang'e more, so he didn't drink the elixir and asked his wife Chang'e to keep it for him.


Hou Yi was becoming more and more famous after he shot down the nine suns and more and more men wanted Hou Yi to be their master. Most of them were accepted by Hou Yi.


Not every student of Hou Yi had good morality. Feng Meng, one of his students, wanted to seize his elixir. One day, Hou Yi went hunting with his students, but Feng Meng pretended to be ill and stay at home. When making sure Hou Yi had gone, he went to Hou Yi's house and tried to force Chang'e to give him the elixer. Chang'e knew she couldn't defeat Feng Meng so she drank the elixer immediately. The elixir made her become an immortal and fly higher and higher. Finally, she stopped on the moon.


From then on, people often pray to Chang'e for fortune and safety. During the Mid- Autumn Festival, they offer lots of food to Chang'e.


source from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival
http://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/culture/mid-autumn-festival-story.htm