The ancients had 10 things to do in the Mid-Autumn Festival: lighting lamps to watch the tide and unmarried women stealing vegetables

Every year on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, it is the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival of the Chinese. Because it is the middle of autumn of the year, it is called the Mid-Autumn Festival. In the Chinese lunar calendar, the year is divided into four seasons, and each season is divided into three parts: Meng, Zhong and Ji, so the Mid-Autumn Festival is also called Mid-autumn. The moon on August 15 is rounder and brighter than the full moon of other months, so it is also called "Yuexi" or "August Festival". On this night, people look up at the bright moon in the sky, and naturally look forward to family reunion. Wanderers who are far away often use this to express their feelings of longing for their hometown and relatives. Therefore, the "Mid-Autumn Festival" is also known as the "Reunion Festival".

In fact, the term "Mid-Autumn Festival" was first seen in the book "Zhou Li", and the real formation of a national festival was in the Tang Dynasty. Every Mid-Autumn Festival night to hold the cold and the moon sacrifice, set up a large incense case, put on the offerings, among which moon cakes and watermelons must not be missing. The watermelon should be cut into lotus shapes. Under the moon, the statue of the moon god is placed in the direction of the moon, the red candle is burned, the whole family worships the moon in turn, and then the housewife cuts the reunion moon cake. The person who cuts it calculates in advance how many people there are in the whole family, and those who are at home and those who are in other places must be counted together, and they cannot cut more or less, and the size should be the same. From this point of view, the ancient people were far more particular about the Mid-Autumn Festival than the modern people.

So, how did the ancients spend the Mid-Autumn Festival? It turns out that they have ten things to do.

One eats moon cakes

"Luozhong Chronicles" said that Tang Xizong ate moon cakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the taste was extremely beautiful, so he ordered the imperial dining room to wrap moon cakes in red silk and reward them to the new scholars. This is the earliest record of mooncakes that we can see. In the Song Dynasty, moon cakes were known as "lotus leaf", "golden flower", "hibiscus" and other elegant names, and their production methods were more exquisite. The poet Su Dongpo praised it in a poem: "Small cakes are like chewing the moon, and there are crisps and syrup." Pastry is puff pastry, and syrup is sugar, and its taste is sweet, crispy and fragrant. After the Song Dynasty, the production of moon cakes not only pays attention to taste, but also designs a variety of patterns related to the legend of the Moon Palace on the cake surface. At first, the pattern on the cake surface was probably drawn on paper and then pasted on the cake surface, and then simply pressed on top of the mooncake with a dough mold. The full moon-shaped mooncake also symbolizes reunion like the full moon on the fifteenth day, and people use it as a holiday food to worship the moon and give it to relatives and friends.

The second is to light the lamp

On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the sky is as clear as water, and the moon is as bright as a mirror. However, people were not satisfied with this, so there was a custom of "lighting lamps" to help the moonlight. In the Huguang area, there is a custom of stacking tiles on the tower to light lamps. In the Jiangnan area, there is a custom of making lightboats. In modern times, the custom of lighting lanterns in the Mid-Autumn Festival is more prevalent. Today's Zhou Yunjin and He Xiangfei described in the article "Leisure Trying to Talk about the Seasons" that the Mid-Autumn Festival is the most prosperous in Guangdong, and each family uses bamboo strips to tie lanterns to make fruits, birds and beasts, fish and insects and the words "Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival" and other words, pasting colored paper and painting various colors. The Mid-Autumn Festival night light is tied to a bamboo pole with a rope, and the tall tree is built on the eaves or terrace, or the small lamp is built into a glyph or various shapes, and hung on the high place of the house, commonly known as the "tree Mid-Autumn Festival" or "vertical Mid-Autumn Festival". The lamp hung by the rich house can be several feet high, and the family gathers under the lamp to drink and have fun, and the ordinary people erect a flagpole and two lanterns, and also enjoy themselves. The lights of the city are nothing less than the glass world. It seems that in ancient times, the scale of the Mid-Autumn Festival lanterns seemed to be second only to the Lantern Festival.

Third, watch the tide

"I know that the jade rabbit is very round, and it has been frosty and cold in September. The message is heavy on the key, and the night tide stays to look at the middle of the moon. This is the poem "Watching the Tide on August 15th" written by Su Shi, a great poet of the Song Dynasty. In ancient times, in the area of Zhejiang, in addition to the Mid-Autumn Festival to admire the moon, the tide watching can be described as another Mid-Autumn Festival. The custom of watching the tide in the Mid-Autumn Festival has a long history, and there is a fairly detailed description in the "Seven Hairs" of the Han Dynasty. After the Han Dynasty, the Mid-Autumn Festival tide watching was more prosperous. Ming Zhu Tinghuan's "Supplementing the Old Things of Wulin" and Song Wu Zimu's "Dream Lianglu" also have records of watching the tide. The grand occasion of tide watching described in these two books shows that in the Song Dynasty, the Mid-Autumn Festival tide watching reached an unprecedented peak.

Fourth, play with the rabbit master

In the "Records of the Palace Maid's Conversation" written by Jin Yi and Shen Yiling, a story told by a palace maid named Rong'er is recounted. At that time, it was the year when the Eight-Nation Alliance entered Beijing, the Empress Dowager Cixi escaped from Kyoto, and the way to escape coincided with the Mid-Autumn Festival. The story goes,

Please indicate the source for reprinting.