VN-VN: Mid-Autumn Festival

Mid Autumn Festival, also called Moon Festival or Lantern Festival, is a fete for children in East Asian countries like China, Vietnam, Japan, Korea.
This year, il will happen on September 24th, 2018.

According to Phan Kế Bính’s book “Vietnamese Customs”, “our people in the 19^th century offered a feast to their ancestors during daytime and at night had a banquet to watch the moon. The main item of the meal was the moon cake with various cakes, fruits, dyed in many bright colors, green, red, white and yellow. Young girls in the cities showed off their skills, carving papayas into various flowers, using flour to make figures like prawns, whales...”

1. Origins
According to archaeologists, images of Mid Autumn Festival were carved on the Ngọc Lũ copper drums.
Mid Autumn Festival probably originated from the water rice civilizations of the South China plains and the Hồng river delta of Vietnam, to celebrate a good harvest, when the peasants enjoyed a rest after a rice season.
According to the Đọi temple headstone in 1121, from the time of the Lý dynasty, Mid Autumn Festival was officially celebrated at Thăng Long capital with boat races, water puppets shows and lantern processions.

2. Meanings
On Mid Autumn Festival, parents prepare a feast for their children to celebrate Mid Autumn, buy and make various candlelit lanterns which are hung in the house and organize lantern processions. This is an occasion for parents and grandparents, depending on their financial means, to show their love for their children and grandchildren and also promote closer family relations.

Also on this occasion, everybody buy moon cakes, tea, wines to pray to their ancestors, to give to their grandparents, parents, teachers, friends, relatives and other benefactors.

3. Customs
3.1 Lantern procession

Again according to Phan Kế Bính, the custom of hanging up lanterns and having banquets originated from the story that King Đường Minh Hoàng ordered people everywhere to hang lanterns and having banquets to celebrate his birthday, thus giving rise to this tradition.  
In a few rural areas, where relations between neighbors are still kept and respected, people organize lantern processions for children to go around various villages, quarters, suburbs on the mid autumn night (like Halloween in the US ?). On the full moon night, children get into groups, to play hopscotch or tug-of-war, to participate in lantern or lion processions.  

Children toys in this Festival are all made out of paper like: elephant, horse, unicorn, lion, dragon, deer, prawn, fish, butterfly, praying mantis, flower, aeroplane, ship...

One special lantern called “carousel lantern” (đèn kéo quân or đèn cù) has its origin in China.

3.2  Unicorn dance

Vietnamese people organize unicorn dances on Mid Autumn Festival.  A unicorn represents luck, wealth and is a good sign for everybody.

3.3  Banquets

On this occasion, people buy moon cakes, tea, wines to pray to their ancestors at night when the full moon is just on.

The Mid Autumn feast generally has a centre piece which is a dog made from grapefruit pieces with two black beans as eyes. Around it are fruits and various baked cakes, soft cakes with multiple ingredients or vegetarian cakes in the shape of a mother pig with her brood of fat piglets, or a carp, these are popular figures.

Special fruits and dishes on this occasion are bananas and green rice flakes, orange, red and dyed green persimmons, custard apples...; grapefruits are essential.

When the moon is at its highest, it is the time to start feasting and everybody enjoy the flavors of the Mid Autumn Festival.

3.4  Moon cakes

Moon cakes represent reunion and are essential to celebrate the full moon and commemorate departed relatives in the mid-autumn season.

Eating moon cakes is an important factor of the Mid-Autumn Festival. Generally, there are two types of moon cakes, baked ones and soft ones.

Baked cakes (bánh nướng) usually have many ingredients, such as finely chopped lemon leaves, fatty meat, preserved fruits, water melon seeds and Chinese sausage.

 Soft cakes (bánh dẻo) are white and made from gelatinous rice flour, has a sweet taste from its green or red bean ingredient which has been cooked and pulverized.

At the beginning, moon cakes have a round shape to represent reunion and completeness. With time, the cake changes its shape to a square, probably for aesthetic reason and to make it easier to store in a square box, with four cakes in one box. On the outside top of the cake, a circle is drawn at its centre with egg yolk, looking like a bright moon...

3.5  Singing with drums (Hát trống quân)

In the North, on Mid-Autumn Festival there is the custom of drum singing. Male and female performers take turns in singing whilst keeping rhythm by hitting a flaxen or steel cord strung across an empty drum, making the "thình thùng thình" sound, giving rhythm to the singing. The songs can have sentences which rhyme or have various meanings or go by pairs (with opposite sounds or meanings), they can be pre-existing or made at the moment.

Also according to Phan Kế Bính, the drum singing tradition dates back to the time of King Quang Trung, “when he took his army to the North, many soldiers were homesick. He then got the soldiers to act as male and female performers singing in turn, to make them happy and alleviate their homesickness.  Drums are used to keep rhythm, hence, it was called “drum singing”.

3.6  Gifts

On Mid-Autumn Festival, people usually give presents to each other.

Gifts are usually boxes of cakes, lanterns, clothing and money. Adults generally give presents to their superiors, such as their parents, bosses, people whom they need help from, teachers or neighbours or children in their families. Generally, the more important the people receiving gifts are the more valuable are the presents.

3.7  Moon watching

The moon watching tradition is related to the story of Uncle Cuội on the moon. One day, Cuội was away, his precious banyan tree was uprooted and flew up into the sky, Cuội arrived home, gripped  the tree roots to hold it back, however, he failed to do so and was brought to the moon with his tree.

Looking at the moon, one can see (with a little bit of imagination) a black spot in the shape of an old tree with a person sitting at its foot; children believe that is the image of Cuội sitting at the banyan tree foot. 

I wish everybody a joyful and happy Mid-Autumn Festival.

Translated by Khai Phan

from VN-VN : Tết Trung Thu (Yên Hà)
August 2018

References: Wikipedia