Mid-Autumn Festival

Second Only in importance to the Chinese New Year, this festival is celebrated annually on the fifteenth day of the eighth month. It is the time when all the harvests, both in the south where there are two crops of rice annually, and in the north where wheat, millet and ‘gaoliang’ or sorgham are grown, are all in, and everyone can rejoice and relax. It is also the time when the moon is at her fullest and most brilliant, and, as the Chinese say, perfectly round.

According to the Chinese yin-yang principle of the dual forces which regulate the universe, yang is male, and personified by the sun, the source of heat, light and energy; yin is female, submissive, dark and cold, and is personified by the moon, the source of ocean tides, rain and cloud. As the sun’s consort, she is the feminine deity by night, to be honoured and worshipped.