First, eat moon cakes.

According to Luo Zhong's records, Tang Xizong ate moon cakes on Mid-Autumn Festival, which was very delicious, so he ordered the chef to package moon cakes in HongLing and give them to the new Jinshi. This may be the earliest record of moon cakes we can see. In the Song Dynasty, moon cakes were called "lotus leaf", "golden flower" and "hibiscus", and their production methods were more exquisite. The poet Su Dongpo praised in a poem: "Small cakes are like chewing the moon, and there is fullness in the crisp." Crisp is crisp, pulp is sugar. It tastes sweet, crisp, fragrant and delicious.

After the Song Dynasty, making moon cakes not only pays attention to the taste, but also designs various 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. Later, I simply pressed it on the moon cake with a dough mold. The moon cake in the shape of a full moon symbolizes a happy reunion, just like the full moon on the 15th National Day. People regard it as holiday food, and use it to worship the moon and give it to relatives and friends.

Second, burn the lamp.

On the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, the sky is as clear as water and the moon is as bright as a mirror, which can be described as a beautiful scene. But people are not satisfied with this, so there is the custom of "burning lamps" to help the moon. In Huguang area, it is customary to stack tiles on the tower and burn lights on it. In Jiangnan, there is a custom of making lanterns. In the modern Mid-Autumn Festival, the custom of burning lanterns is more popular. Modern people Zhou Yunjin and He Wei said in the article "Talking about the Four Seasons" that lanterns are the most popular in Guangdong. Ten days before the Mid-Autumn Festival, every family tied lanterns with bamboo sticks, made fruits, birds and animals, fish and insects and "celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival", pasted paper and painted them with various colors. The internal combustion candles of Mid-Autumn Night Lights are tied to bamboo poles with ropes, hung high on tile eaves or terraces, or hung on the heights of houses in zigzag or various shapes with small lights, commonly known as "Mid-Autumn Festival on trees" or "Mid-Autumn Festival vertically". Rich people can hang lights as high as tens of feet. Families gather under the lamp to enjoy drinking, and ordinary people erect a flagpole and two lanterns to enjoy themselves. The city is full of lights and glass. It seems that since ancient times, the custom of burning lanterns in Mid-Autumn Festival seems to be second only to Lantern Festival in scale.

Third, watch the tide.

"Know the jade rabbit is very round, September has frost cold. Send a message to close the door and close the key, and the night tide stays in the moon. " This is the poem Watching the Tide on August 15th written by Su Shi, a great poet in the Song Dynasty. In ancient times, Zhejiang Mid-Autumn Festival was another Mid-Autumn Festival activity besides watching the moon. The custom of watching tide in Mid-Autumn Festival has a long history, which is described in detail in Mei Cheng's Seven Mao Fu in Han Dynasty. After the Han Dynasty, Mid-Autumn tide watching became more popular. There are also records of watching the tide in Zhu Tinghuan's Ming Bu Wulin Past and Zi Mu's Meng Lianglu. The grand occasion of tide watching described in these two books shows that tide watching reached its peak in the Mid-Autumn Festival in the Song Dynasty.

Fourth, play a male prostitute.

Jin Yi and Shen Yiling are close friends. They wrote a story told by maid-in-waiting Rong Er. It was the year when Eight-Nation Alliance entered Beijing. Empress Dowager Cixi escaped from Kyoto, which coincided with the Mid-Autumn Festival. In a panic, the Empress Dowager did not forget the old rituals and customs, so she held a ceremony to worship the moon in Xinzhou Gongyuan.

According to the story, after dinner, according to the rules of the palace, the queen will sacrifice to "Taiyin Jun". This probably follows the custom of "men don't worship rabbits and women don't sacrifice stoves" in Northeast China, and "Taiyin Jun" is a ritual for every housewife. In the southeast corner of the courtyard, a sacrificial table is placed to invite God to come (a big rabbit is printed on a piece of paper in the Moon Palace) and put it on the incense altar. The incense altar is a square barrel, and the barrel in northern Shaanxi is not round, but square. In the street, I sometimes overhear people in northern Shaanxi sing "The moon is round, the square doesn't fight, and the sweetness is not sweet." It can be seen that the fights in northern Shaanxi are all square. The barrel is full of new sorghum, the mouth of the barrel is covered with yellow paper, and there are four plates of fruit and four plates of moon cakes on the table. The moon cake is half a foot high.

In addition, in the middle of a big wooden plate, there is a round moon cake with a diameter of one foot, which is specially made for rabbit sacrifice. Four bowls of green tea means putting the tea leaves in a bowl and washing them with cold water. Rong Er, the maid of honor, said, "In this way, the ceremony will be completed by the Queen, her concubines, Gege and all of us. We all run away and are superstitious, for fear of offending ghosts and gods and bringing disaster to ourselves. Therefore, whenever there is an opportunity to kowtow to ghosts and gods, they all strive to participate. " This story is about the custom of offering sacrifices to the moon rabbit in the Qing court. Although it was in the process of fleeing, the incense altar had to be replaced by a square barrel in northern Shaanxi, but psychologically, because it was fleeing, it was more pious and pious to God.

According to this story, the Qing court called the jade rabbit on the moon Taiyin Jun. However, the people are different. People call it jade male prostitute, not as solemn as Taiyin Jun, but more cordial. In the folk customs around Beijing, the Mid-Autumn Festival male prostitutes are actually not so solemn, but more games. Although it shows little respect for God, it reflects the change of folk psychology of worshipping God.

Five, stay up late

According to folklore, the later you sleep at Mid-Autumn Festival, the longer you live. So some people pray for longevity, but more modern young people take this opportunity to play all night.

Six, stealing onions and vegetables

According to legend, if an unmarried girl steals vegetables or onions from another vegetable garden on the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, it means that she will meet a Mr Right in the future. There is a saying in Taiwan Province Province that "steal onions and marry a good husband; Stealing vegetables and marrying a good husband "refers to this custom.

Seven, eat ducks

Mulao people in southwest China pay attention to buying cakes to kill ducks on this day. What osmanthus ducks, salted ducks and Zhangcha ducks in Nanjing often sell well at this time. If you don't find anything, it's probably not bad to bring a Beijing roast duck home to eat.

Eight, eat snails

People believe that snails can improve their eyesight in the Mid-Autumn Festival. After investigation, vitamin A contained in snail meat is an important substance of eye visual pigment, which shows that this statement is reasonable. But why do you have to eat it on the Mid-Autumn Festival? It was pointed out that before and after the Mid-Autumn Festival, snails were empty and there were no snails in the abdomen, so the meat was particularly fat. Nowadays, in Guangzhou, many families have the habit of frying snails in the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Nine, eat taro

Qing Qianlong's "Chaozhou County Records" said: "Playing the moon in the Mid-Autumn Festival, cutting taro and eating it is called peeling the ghost skin." Therefore, eating taro in Mid-Autumn Festival means to ward off evil spirits and eliminate disasters, and it means not to believe in evil spirits.

Ten, drink osmanthus wine.

Qu Yuan's "Nine Songs" contains poems such as "Help a horse to drink cinnamon pulp" and "Drink cinnamon wine and pepper pulp". But now, people mostly use red wine instead.