Happy mid autumn/moon festival! (月夕)

Well Autumn is almost here and the moon festival is upon us... cue lots of yummy moon cakes! yum... mid autumn festival is one of the biggest Chinese celebrations, along with Chinese new year and the Dragon boat festival. Moon festival (also called mid autumn festival) is celebrated on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the Chinese (lunar) calendar, around the time of the autumn equinox (usually occurring sometime between the second week of September and the second week of October). I guess the western equivalent is the harvest festival, but on a much bigger Christmas-like scale. As usual, true to Chinese tradition, there's a ton of superstitious stuff you're supposed and not supposed to do (depending on where in China you come from). These include:

• Putting pomelo rinds on one's head
• Carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, floating sky lanterns
• Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e (Chinese: 嫦娥; pinyin: Cháng'é)
• Planting Mid-Autumn trees
• Collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members
• Fire Dragon Dances

... and of course, giving and receiving really yummy moon cakes, so called because they have a yellow duck egg yolk inside, like the moon.

This time of year also spawns a raft of great resources to practice your Chinese, and as I have just returned back to Chinese classes at college, I have collated all the ones I could find. Some are great reading practice.

Practice Chinese with the best teachers - Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋节/中秋節 (zhōngqiūjié)
Bill Glover - 中国的月饼
Bill Glover - 我的第一个月饼
eChinese learning - Chinese customs mid Autumn festival
About Mandarin - Moon festival vocabulary