#中秋节

| 10月1日 | 32/100 Days of Productivity |

中秋节快乐！Today we reunite with our family, eat moon cake, look upon the moon and wish for a long life.

Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋节 I hope everyone who celebrates are able to celebrate with their families

At 中秋节 Chinese people eat moon cakes 月饼, which traditionally are round 圆 like the moon, a symbol of reunion 团圆 and never seperating 分开. It resembles always being together with your family

| 9月29日 | 30/100 Days of Productivity |

中秋节快要到了，你们过了吗？我上周买了月饼 在这里它们一点贵，但是为了中秋节我觉得是划得来。

It is almost 中秋节, Mid-Autumn Festival This year it is celebrated on the 1st of October 2020, which is also, 十一 , the PRC National Day of China. During this festival, Chinese get together with their families and eat moon cakes and look upon the moon.

I promised you that I would share some poems with you. This is a poem about missing the family reunion of the festival. It describes how beautiful it is, in a quiet yet sad way. The sadness and longing is very prominent. I cannot celebrate the festival with my family this year either, so I feel deeply connected to this poem. I hope everyone who celebrates can be with their 家人 family (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

When people search for Mid-Autumn-Festival-related images, wabbits rabbits tend to pop up a lot, like this:

Or this:

But why?

“Rabbit” on the Moon:

It’s speculated that the legends about rabbits on the moon may have originated from some imaginative ancient moon-gazers, because the visible basalt plains (lunar maria) on the moon’s surface seemed to meld….and form a "shadow” of a rabbit standing over some sort of container:

But since people thousands of years ago didn’t understand the universe like we do today, they resorted to stories to explain this weird shadow on the moon, and thus the legend of Chang‘e (嫦娥) was born.  

Legend of Chang’e

There were many existing versions of the story through the ages, but all revolved around Chang’e consuming the elixir of immortality, resulting in her being separated from her husband Yi (羿), the legendary archer.  Some say it was because Chang’e tried to protect Yi’s elixir from a thief, some say it’s because Chang’e was a minor goddess and life on earth was too boring for her, and some say it was because Yi cheated on her with the wife of a river god.  Regardless, she consumed the elixir of immortality that the gods gave to Yi.  However, the gods were not pleased by this, so as punishment, they turned her into a rabbit (some say she was turned into a toad), sent her onto the moon alone, and ordered her to make immortality elixirs for eternity.  But since Chang’e and Yi did love each other, they missed each other dearly, so every mid-autumn Yi would gaze at the moon to look at the rabbit, still grinding away with the mortar and pestle.

…and that’s how the Mid-Autumn Festival became associated with rabbits.

So, without further ado…

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!! And thank heavens for the wonders of technology

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival to everyone!! I hope you all get to enjoy some mooncake of your choice :>

Friday, September 13th is the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival of 2019! 

The Mid-Autumn Festival was traditionally celebrated by the Han Chinese, but many other ethnic groups across China and the entire world now recognize the holiday. Outside of China, the Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated by the Japanese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Filipinos, and many others. This offers a clear example of the influence of Chinese culture on the rest of the world!

(source: publicholidays.cn)

Spend some time to connect with your family members and don’t forget to treat yourself with the moon cake, or yuebing (月饼)! 

Lastly, ‘zhongqiujie kuaile’ (中秋节快乐！), or ‘Happy Mid-Autumn Festival’!

苏式糕点

中秋佳节，你想家了吗？

粤式月饼 Moon cake

紅棗泥陷、松子仁

一口月餅一口茶。

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! 中秋節快樂！