Mid-autumn Festival
The 15th day of the 8th lunar month, it is the traditional Mid-autumn Festival. By now, it is intermediate stage of the autumn. Therefore it’s called mid-autumn festival. There are many Mid-autumn Festival’s custom at different area, the forms are also various. But all of these repose the people infinite deep love for the life and the happiness.
This day was also considered a harvest festival since fruits, vegetables and grain had been harvested by this time and food was abundant. With delinquent accounts settled prior to the festival, it was a time for relaxation and celebration. Food offerings were placed on an Altar set up in the courtyard. Apples, pears, peaches, grapes, pomegranates, melons, oranges and pommels might be seen. Special foods for the festival included moon cakes, cooked taro, and edible snails from the taro patches or rice paddies cooked with sweet basil, and water caltrops, a type of water chestnut resembling black buffalo horns. Some people insisted that cooked taro be included because at the time of creation, taro was the first food discovered at night in the moonlight. Of all these foods, it could not be omitted from the Mid-Autumn Festival.
The round moon cakes, measuring about three inches in diameter and one and a half inches in thickness, resembled Western fruitcakes in taste and consistency. These cakes were made with melon seeds, lotus seeds, almonds, minced meats, bean paste, orange peels and lard. A golden yolk from a salted duck egg was placed at the center of each cake, and the golden brown crust was decorated with symbols of the festival. Traditionally, thirteen moon cakes were piled in a pyramid to symbolize the thirteen moons of a "complete year," that is, twelve moons plus one intercalary moon.
