Mid Autumn

The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the most vibrant and picturesque celebrations of the year. It is a popular Chinese celebration of abundance and togetherness, dating back over 3,000 years to China's Zhou Dynasty.

The festival commemorates a 14th Century uprising against the Mongols. In a cunning plan, the rebels wrote the call to revolt on pieces of paper and embedded them in cakes that they smuggled to compatriots.

Today, during the festival, people eat special sweet cakes known as "Moon Cakes" (yuek beng) made of a whole range of ingredients like ground lotus and sesame seed paste, egg-yolk and all kinds of sugary fillings are used. Along with the cakes, shops sell coloured Chinese paper lanterns in the shapes of animals, and more recently, in the shapes of aeroplanes and space ships.

On this family occasion, parents allow children to stay up late and take them to high vantage points such as The Peak to light their lanterns and watch the huge autumn moon rise while eating their moon cakes. Public parks are ablaze with many thousands of lanterns in all colours, sizes and shapes.

Also not to be missed is one of the most spectacular celebrations you'll ever see, which takes place in Causeway Bay during the Mid-Autumn Festival on the 14th - 16th day of the eighth lunar month. It's the fire dragon dance in Tai Hang - a collection of streets located in behind the Causeway Bay recreation grounds and features a dragon measuring 67 metres.

The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September in the Gregorian calendar), a date that parallels the Autumn Equinox of the solar calendar. At this time, the moon is at its fullest and brightest, marking an ideal time to celebrate the abundance of the summer's harvest. The term round implies family reunion in Chinese. So the Moon Festival is a festival for members of a family to get together wherever it is possible. Sons and daughters bring their family members back to their parents' house for a typical dinner together, for a reunion.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar and is a legal holiday in several countries.