The Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节 zhōngqiūjié), also known as the Moon Festival, is a popular celebration of abundance and togetherness, dating back over 3,000 years to China’s Zhou Dynasty. This day is also considered a harvest festival since fruits, vegetables and grain have been harvested by this time and food is abundant.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. This is the ideal time, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest, to celebrate the abundance of the summer’s harvest. In 2007, the mid-autumn festival falls on September 25.

In the Chinese lunar calendar tradition, the seventh, eighth and ninth months comprise autumn. During fall, the weather is getting drier, and the skies are commonly clear and cloudless and the nights crisp and sharp. Thus the festival celebrates the moon’s appearance as the brightest and most beautiful throughout the year.

The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake. Mooncakes are typically round, symbolizing the full round moon of the mid-autumn festival. The round mooncakes, measuring about three inches in diameter and one and a half inches in thickness are 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. The picture above shows a typical mooncake and its inner and outer packages.

Nowadays there are many different varieties of mooncakes, and there are even square-shaped ones. Last month, a super large mooncake was made in Shenyang, Liaoning, weighing nearly 13 tons. This mooncake is 8.15 meters in diameter and 20 centimeters in height, and has a coating weighing one ton, and filling weighing 12 tons, and took ten chefs more than 10 hours to make it.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar, and the other being the Chinese Lunar New Year.

Quoting from Xinhuanet.com, and pictures added by the Journal:

The poet, Qu Yuan, lived in the state of Chu during the Warring States period (475 B.C. to 221 B.C.). He drowned himself in the Miluo River in today’s Hunan Province in 278 B.C., on fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, hoping his death could awaken the king to revitalize the kingdom.

The date has since been remembered as the Dragon Boat Festival, or Duanwu Festival, on which local fishermen row dragon boats along the Miluo river to search for Qu Yuan and scatter glutinous rice dumplings in the water to prevent the fish from eating his body.

And,

The appeal of traditional Chinese holidays is alleged to lie in the eating: mooncakes on the Mid-Autumn Festival, sweet dumplings on Lantern Day, and glutinous rice dumplings for Duanwu, or Dragon Boat Festival.

The Lantern Festival (元宵节) is on the 15th day of the first month of the Lunar Year, taking place under a full moon, and marks the end of Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) festivities. For the year of 2007, it is today - the 4th of March. It is said that the Festival dates back to shrouded legends of the Han Dynasty over 2000 years ago.

The important festivity for this day is watching lanterns of numerous kinds, and “Guessing lantern riddles” is an essential part of the Festival. People write riddles on a piece of paper and post them on the lanterns (or write them directly on the lanterns). Visitors who work out the solutions to the riddles can tear it off (or remember the numbers) and take it the lantern owners to check their answer. Sometimes, if the solution are right, they will be given a little gift.

The special food for the Festival is Yuan Xiao (元宵) or Tang Yuan (汤圆), or rice dumplings. Yuan Xiao are balls of glutinous rice rolled around a filling of sesame, peanuts, vegetable, or meat. Yuan Xiao can be boiled or fried. Tang Yuan are often cooked in red-bean or other kinds of soup.

It is said that the custom of eating Yuanxiao originated during the Eastern Jin Dynasty in the fourth centuty, then became popular during the Tang and Song periods. The round shape symbolizes wholeness and unity.

Note: Some photos are from http://www.pingtan.com.cn/.